/09-09-11%20Web

10 The Decade That 9/11 Made

how the attacks shaped columbia, page a2 cava responds to a city in danger, page a3 grappling with a generational moment, page a4-a5 wkcr recovers from a loss, page a6 a lion gone, but not forgotten, page a7

PAGE A2

REMEMBERING 9/11

SEPTEMBER 9, 2011

In 10 years following tragedy, University forges on Students remember days after attack as a period of unity

BY MADINA TOURE Spectator Senior Staff Writer One week after Rebecca Weber started her first year at Columbia, she looked up to see black smoke floating over campus.

It had drifted from the smoldering area that would come to be known as Ground Zero, an image that has remained with Weber for the last decade.

“We weep with people at Columbia. We stand with people at Columbia. We fight with people at Columbia.”

—Jewelnel Davis, University Chaplain

“I felt like Columbia was a world away from the attacks, and yet there were reminders that that was totally not true,” Weber, CC ’05, said recently. “That was a very jarring reminder that although 116th Street seemed very far from [downtown] Manhattan, it is physically not that far at all.”

Columbia University lost 41 affiliates in the terrorist attacks of that day. For the class of 2005, the attacks came to define their four years, and future classes have felt their effects ripple through the University in other ways—academic and religious, social and psychological.

Ten years later, students and administrators who were on campus at the time of the attacks said feelings of fear, confusion, and unity have stayed with them.

Austin Quigley, the dean of Columbia College from 1995 to 2009, described the feeling of loss as a collective emotion—“even if we didn’t know them, they were one of us.”

A decade later, he said the sense of unity that followed has also left its mark.

“There is a much stronger sense of people feeling that they need to contribute to the place, to take some responsibility for it and to strengthen it for people that come after them,” he said.

sirens, then candlelight The World Trade Center collapsed just a few miles away from campus, and for many on that day, the tragedy felt even closer.

“There was an odor in the air that was so strong—the smoke,” Jewelnel Davis, the University chaplain and director of Earl Hall, said. “You were breathing in lost hopes. You were breathing in broken families. You were breathing in, you know, just terror.”

“It was as if there was a fire close by,” Greg Shill, CC ’02, said.

Raquel Whittaker, assistant director for the Office of the Chaplain, remembered the sounds.

“Everything else stopped,” Whittaker said. “You couldn’t hear any planes or traffic. All you could hear was sirens. Sirens, sirens, sirens.”

By nighttime on the day of the attacks, “everyone wanted to come together to pay respects but at the same time feel a sense of community,” said Scott Koonin, CC ’02 and then-president of the InterGreek Council. “What came about organically was a candlelight vigil on the steps of Low Library.”

In a show of solidarity between the Jewish and Muslim communities on campus, then-president of Columbia/Barnard Hillel Lani Santo, BC ’02 and then-president of the Muslim Students Association Ayesha Syed, BC ’03, spoke together at the vigil.

“It felt important that a representative of Hillel and a representative of MSA stand in solidarity on a day like that then,” Santo said.

“What later grew out of it was that we ended up working together more.”

Santo and Syed said that the vigil helped students sort through the initial aftermath, and Syed said it sparked more interfaith events between Hillel and MSA. “It was an incredibly moving thing,” Santo said. “A lot of people spoke about losing people.”

Current MSA president Irem Bilgic, SEAS ’12, said that MSA and Hillel have continued to work together in the years following the attacks, recently planning a series of panels on subjects like the origins of religious stereotypes as well as small dinners for casual discussion among members of both groups.

Quigley said that immediately following the attacks, there was no panic on campus, but a pervasive sense of shock.

“We were dealing with a

FILE PHOTOS

COME TOGETHER In the weeks following the attacks, students, faculty, and administrators struggled with collective feelings of loss and confusion. Student leaders from across campus came together to hold vigils and memorial services, as flags flew at half staff. |

situation that nobody could adequately describe, and I’m not just talking about administrators but students, parents, the people of New York and people all over the United States,” Quigley said.

“The University identifies very closely with the city of New York, so the first reaction that we had was that we felt as if we too had been attacked,” then-University President George Rupp said. “I think there was a general sense of vulnerability and the result of that was I think we did pull together extremely well as a community.”

In the months following the attacks, Columbia provided individuals with ongoing medical care, longer-term counseling for mourners and survivors, legal advice for the families of the victims

NEW BEGINNINGS

ZARA CASTANY / SENIOR STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

LOOKING AHEAD | A construction worker looks out over the World Trade Center site. A memorial museum is scheduled to open on September 11, 2011 to coincide with the anniversary.

and the injured, consultation on economic development, and support for rebuilding neighborhoods that were directly affected by the attacks, Rupp said.

“September 11, 2001, was indeed a traumatic day, and its aftermath continues,” Rupp wrote in a statement. “Ten years later we can and should celebrate our collective response to a calamitous attack.”

Quigley noted how students, faculty, and administrators were eager to help on that day 10 years ago.

“Students with different levels of experience and maturity took it upon themselves to help each other,” he said. “People feeling the most calm helping the people the most in tears.” emergeny response mode Immediately after the attacks, Rupp convened a University-wide committee to deal with the most pressing issues. Hundreds of staff members were unable to get home due to closed bridges and tunnels, and thousands of students needed to be fed despite the usual supply routes being interrupted.

Solutions were creative. In a time before cell phones were commonplace, the University reconfigured its switchboard to allow more students to call home.

Roone Arledge auditorium was filled with cots and became an additional dormitory.

“We scrambled on other fronts as well to meet basic needs—for example, in addressing immediate requests for greatly expanded counseling services,” Rupp said.

Students largely remained on campus, something Quigley attributed to a general sense of determination.

“The student inclination was absolutely not to go home, and I think you can imagine that many parents would think very strongly about how vulnerable students were to be in New York at that

time. But the student inclination was determined—‘We want to be here,’” he said.

“We were dealing with a situation that nobody could adequately describe, and I’m not just talking about administrators but students, parents, the people of New York and people all over the United States.”

—Austin Quigley, former dean of Columbia College In an effort to enable students and faculty to deal with the event together, Rupp said that Columbia decided to continue classes the day after the attacks occurred, to allow students and faculty to process the events with people they knew.

Kathryn Yatrakis, Columbia’s dean of academic affairs since 1998, stressed that continuing classes projected an image of strength in a time when many felt vulnerable.

“We decided after the first day that we were going to continue to have classes, the feeling being that we did not want to give in to the terrorists and education had to continue,” Yatrakis said.

It was a decision that still impresses Sania Chaudhry, BC ’05, a first-year at the time.

“What I thought was the most reassuring part of all of it was that as a university, they refused to kind of stand down,” Chaudhry said. “It wasn’t like, ‘Oh, we’re going to be in mourning,’ or ‘Oh, we’re going to be afraid,’ you know, ‘We’re going to go about our daily business.’”

But Tom Gorman, CC ’04, said he was unhappy to be back in class the next day.

“It seemed really callous to try to get everybody back into their routines the next day,” he said.

At Barnard, students and faculty gathered on Lehman Lawn in the morning after the attacks occurred to hear then-President Judith Shapiro speak, along with Dennis Dalton, professor emeritus of political theory, and Janet Jakobsen, director of the Barnard Center for Research on Women.

“The main theme of my talk at that time was [that] I have been influenced a great deal in my life

by Gandhi and King and by their ideas of nonviolence,” Dalton said, adding that he “strongly counseled against any violent or military action against the presumed foe; against Afghanistan or Al-Qaeda.”

He concluded his speech by “urging people to pause, reflect on where we are at that time and to try to understand how this could have happened.” ‘not one student’ Jessica Cannon, BC ’03 and now Barnard’s coordinator for health promotion and education, said that President Shapiro’s address reassured her, but she was still conflicted about her connection to the attacks.

“Being at Barnard, I felt very close to, yet at the same time, very far from what was happening,”

SEE COLUMBIA, page A6

SEPTEMBER 9, 2011

REMEMBERING 9/11

PAGE A3

Letter from the Editor We can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow, this ground.

Trying to comprehend the events of 10 years past, to record them in all their effects and comment on them with good sense, seems as impossible and as futile as trying to wrap our arms around the missing buildings themselves.

As today’s staff editorial (see page A4) points out, for most current Columbia undergraduates, the attacks came midway through our lives. For the generation born in the early 1990s, one day of terror divided a childhood of peace and security from an adolescence of turmoil and war. The events of that day, not of our own making, made us.

With that in mind, we offer you stories of September 11, 2001, and the ten years thereafter: the experiences of the EMTs who rushed to the scene, and of the young girl who watched from half a world away; the radio station that went dark, and the soldier who came to see the light; and the Columbia graduate whose death, ten years ago, continues to inspire works of hope and goodwill.

We have done this because, in spite of all we cannot do, we can remember.

We can—as a city, as a University, as individuals—rebuild.

We’re here with you.

Sincerely, Samuel E. Roth Editor in Chief Michele Cleary Managing Editor

From the Archive This article originally appeared on the front page of the September 12, 2001, edition of Spectator.

University leaders keep control on a day of terror

BY BEN CASSELMAN Columbia Daily Spectator

Current students say generation CAVA members recall difficult decisions, restlessness after attacks marked by threat of terrorism

BY SHIRA LAUCHAROEN Spectator Staff Writer A decade ago, this year’s senior class likely sat in their sixth grade homerooms as the one of the most significant events of their generation unfolded.

For Jasmine Senior, CC ’12, the attacks impacted her in ways both personal and intellectual.

Her mother, who had served in the military for 21 years, was deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq, while back home Senior developed an interest in political science and current events.

“September 11 happened when we were younger, so we grew up with it, this war, and the change in American culture,” Senior said.

Students like Jason Mogen, CC ’12, called it an event that defined the generation that grew up around it.

“I definitely think there is a 9/11 culture,” Mogen said. “There is a lot of nostalgia and reflection, as well as political manipulation, which has both positives and negatives. It’s very thematic and referential. There’s a rhetoric that’s developed out of it.”

Senior said the legacy of caution that developed after the attacks continues to touch people’s lives today.

“There was a constant sense of fear. Even now, for the anniversary, I know security is being tightened everywhere across the city,” Senior said.

“Every day there was a sense of ‘What’s going to happen next?’

There was anthrax, airport security. People’s lives completely changed because they were unconsciously affected and deeply emotional.”

Sheila Misheni, SEAS ’14,

who immigrated from Kenya, noted the dramatic transformation in airport security practices just in her lifetime—changes that echoed worldwide.

“Before you didn’t have to take off your shoes. Nobody thought about terrorists. People became more scared and hesitant,” Misheni said.

Kat Chan, SEAS ’12, said the terrorist attacks and subsequent wars may have shaped a culture of apathy and cynicism in younger generations.

“We grew up with it, this war, and the change in American culture.”

— Jasmine Senior, CC ’12 “I think we experienced terrorism before we were able to identify it or contextualize it,” Chan said. “There was an inability to cope or understand, and people distance themselves from these very events. I think there’s still a state of shock.”

But Mogen said he attributes the attacks to the development of idealism among young adults. International crisis caused a generation of individuals to struggle with moral and political questions early on, he added.

“Going through middle school, high school, and college with a 9/11 rhetoric causes us to focus on the issues 9/11 is about and makes us passionate about those ideas,” Mogen said. news@columbiaspectator.com

BY LEAH GREENBAUM AND ELISSE ROCHE Columbia Daily Spectator “Are we going?”

Joshua Marks, the captain of Columbia Area Volunteer Ambulance, or CAVA, had just woken up.

“Going where?” he asked the frantic voice on the other end of his ROLM phone line.

“Turn on your TV!” Marks switched on his television just in time to see the second plane crash into the Twin Towers.

Minutes later, he stood at CAVA headquarters in the basement of Carman Hall, surrounded by his entire team of volunteer emergency medical technicians.

Everyone wanted to know the same thing: how could they help? How could they get down there?

Tom Gorman, CC ’04 and a CAVA volunteer, said he remembers “chomping at the bit” to join the rescue effort.

“I think the universal reaction of everyone that day was helplessness. We felt like we were sitting on campus and not much was going on, meanwhile we were watching the news and hearing that people downtown needed help,” he said, adding that news reports were indicating that there would be tens of thousands of survivors.

The CAVA team was split.

Many wanted to go downtown, but Marks and others said they couldn’t abandon their posts on campus.

“At that point in the morning we still did not know what else might happen and what

the extent of the attacks might be,” Marks said. “Public Safety was concerned as Columbia is a prominent Manhattan target as well.”

In the days following the attacks, CAVA proved an invaluable service to Morningside Heights. Marks and other students fielded calls from across the Upper West Side, while other local ambulance services stationed themselves downtown.

By the end of the day, CAVA volunteers were attending to twisted ankles and dehydration, as people who had walked home from the Financial District after the attacks began to trickle in.

“At that point it was the momentum. It was the thing I had to do.”

—Dan Karlin, CC ’01 But Gorman and several others headed downtown. One group took a cab and their zealous driver ran every red light from 116th Street to Canal Street to get the EMTs to the disaster zone as quickly as possible.

Gorman and four others hopped into a borrowed station wagon and looked for a triage center where they’d be needed.

At St. Vincent’s Hospital downtown, “there were literally 500 doctors, standing there outside waiting,” Gorman said.

Scores of doctors and

SEE CAVA, page A6

As emergency crews rushed to lower Manhattan yesterday, University administrators acted quickly to secure the campus, offer counseling and support to community members in need, and reach out to help those affected by the destruction of the World Trade Center towers this morning.

Top administrators at Columbia and Barnard met about an hour after the first explosion rocked the towers to discuss the appropriate response to the tragedy.

Administrators quickly decided to cancel classes, according to Associate Vice President for Public Affairs Virgil Renzulli, once the magnitude of the tragedy became known at about 10:30 a.m.

“This is a national tragedy,” Renzulli said. “Almost no one would be able to concentrate today. ... This was not a time when it would be business as usual.”

Classes will be held today unless Columbia is ordered not to hold classes by state or local government.

University President George Rupp released a statement to all students via voicemail, e-mail, and flyers posted and passed out around campus.

“We are shocked and saddened by the horrible acts of violence committed today in New York and across the nation,” Rupp said. “We extend our deepest sympathies to those who have had family and friends touched directly by these cruel deeds.

We will work as hard as we can to help each other through this very trying time.”

Faculty and staff members affected by the tragedy were allowed to go home shortly after the first attack.

As with past campus tragedies, University administrators worked quickly to inform students of the situation and extend support. But while administrators could reach out via e-mail, voice-mail, and the University website, they could not possibly offer counseling support to all those who felt the need to discuss the tragedy, Renzulli said.

“There’s no way that counseling services could see everyone who wants to be seen today,” Renzulli said.

Consequently, Rupp’s message called on community members to reach out to their individual support networks.

Students, faculty members, and staffers did so in a variety of ways [see center spread, pages eight and nine]. Many offered to help in any way possible. Some contacted the University Chaplain and other offices to try to get involved by organizing a blood drive [see story, page seven].

Resident Advisers organized a session in East Campus to talk to students, many professors offered to meet with students

during class times, and students organized two separate candlelight vigils at Barnard and Columbia last night.

There were Universityorchestrated outreach efforts, as well. Meetings were held in several residence halls and in other campus locations last night and during the day, and the University Chaplain led an ecumenical prayer service in St. Paul’s Chapel, which included words of assurance from ministers of several religions, as well as words from Rupp. Columbia’s standard support services responded quickly, including Counseling and Psychological Services, which held walk-in hours all day. Counseling and Psychological Services will also hold extended walk-in hours today.

Administrators worked to help those who had been more directly affected by the tragedy. With travel in and out of Manhattan close to impossible, administrators aided staff and students who had lost friends and family in leaving Manhattan to reunite with their families.

The University set up mattresses and sleeping bags in Lerner Hall’s Roone Arledge Auditorium for anyone in the Columbia community who could not return to homes outside of Manhattan. Most people, however, found space to stay with friends and colleagues on or near campus.

Telephone and Internet service throughout New York was erratic in the hours following the attacks, not due to infrastructure damage as much as to the extremely high volume of calls generated by people around the country who wanted to confirm the safety of their loved ones.

Vice President for Facilities Management Mark Burstein said difficulties getting an outside line from Columbia were not due to Columbia’s circuits being overloaded, but to an overload of New York’s circuits. Burstein said the University increased the circuits for outgoing calls and decreased the circuits for incoming calls so that students could reach their families more easily.

Administrators worked to keep students up to date on the events transpiring both on campus and downtown, setting up an information kiosk on Low Plaza and leaving televisions across campus tuned to news stations. Administrators took preventative action to ensure the campus’s security by closing several campus gates and prohibiting parking on College Walk. There was a heightened security presence on campus throughout the day, although the measures were purely precautionary, according to Burstein. The goal, Burstein said, was to “keep the campus as open as possible” while still ensuring security.

PAGE A4

OPINION

SEPTEMBER 9, 2011

Reflecting on 9/11 In honor of the tenth anniversary of 9/11, students and professors share their perspectives on the tragic day. Allan MacLeod reflects on serving as a soldier in the Middle East, Marianne Hirsch questions how we should commemorate the anniversary, Randall Balmer comments on the history of the World Trade Center, Joohyun Lee shares the international world’s reaction to the attack, and Ben Lyons recalls how Columbia dealt with the disaster.

Injured Cities/Urban Afterlives

BY MARIANNE HIRSCH How shall we commemorate the events of September 11, 2001, now that ten years have passed?

This question has been plaguing cultural and academic institutions, news organizations, as well as individuals and families for months. “Media Strive to Cover an Anniversary Without Seeming to Exploit a Tragedy,” read a New York Times headline earlier this week. One television executive is quoted as saying that “a week almost isn’t enough” to do justice to the event, while the editor of a major magazine planning the inevitable commemorative issue wonders if she is capable of being moved again, ultimately reassuring herself that “my ability to be moved by this still is profound.” Will the public be interested to watch, listen, relive the events of the day? Will the new books on the subject find a readership?

The appropriate scale of the commemoration seems to pose

the greatest challenge: How can the immense local loss of some be honored, even as we acknowledge the disastrous effects the 9/11 events have had on our civil and political institutions, the perpetual wars that have followed and the other massive disasters, some directly related, that have marked this decade across the globe?

As the anniversary approaches and I ask colleagues how they feel in anticipation, I mostly get shoulder shrugs in response. We don’t seem to know how we feel.

Is it because we are shielding ourselves from recalling the impact of the event—the shock, the fear, the loss? Or are we already expecting media oversaturation, exploitation for jingoistic purposes, American victimization and exceptionalism—all as a renewed alibi for continuing wars?

Have we been so thoroughly silenced and demoralized by the massive surveillance to which we are being subjected, the terror alerts, and the economic

crises caused by military spending, that we have jettisoned critique for anomie?

The only appropriate memorialization is one that is at once tough, critical, and visionary The “Engendering Archives” working group of Columbia’s Center for the Critical Analysis of Social Difference has for the last year been discussing alternative conversations we might stage during this anniversary period. “Engendering Archives” studies the way in which archives shape the stories and lives that a culture remembers and those it suppresses or

forgets. We planned a conference around this anniversary precisely to think critically about the narratives, the images, and the practices through which the events of 9/11 are remembered and about how they might be mobilized for more progressive political use. We felt that the conference could not be held in immediate proximity to the anniversary—a moment that seemed too personal for those directly and intimately affected to open itself to intellectual and political debate. Nor could it be centered on New York alone: it had to reach across borders to place the events of September 11, 2001, in global context, to assess their impact on other cities and other lives. And, it had to feature one of the largest archives of a mass disaster in the United States, Columbia’s Oral History Center’s “September 11, 2001, Oral History Narrative and Memory Project.”

“Injured Cities/Urban Afterlives,” to be held on

October 14 and 15 at Miller Theater and Wood Auditorium, will look beyond New York to how cities respond in the aftermath of catastrophe. Narrators and oral historians will present individual stories that illuminate the conditions of vulnerability that make some lives more worthy of recognition than others. Artists Walid Ra’ad, Shirin Neshat, and Dinh Q. Lê, architects Clive van den Berg, Eyal Weizman, and Teddy Cruz, writers and journalists Nina Bernstein, Ann Jones, and Anne McClintock, and theorists Saskia Sassen, Karen Till, and Ariella Azoulay will explore the artistic and political aftermath of urban disasters in cities like Cape Town, Johannesberg, Tehran, Kabul, Gaza, Beirut, Hanoi, Los Angeles, and New York. Mapa Teatro, a theater group from Bogotá, Colombia, will bring their performance of the destruction of a city neighborhood, “Witness to the Ruins.” The Neiman Gallery

will be holding an exhibition of photographs by Lorie Novak, “Encounters in the Aftermath,” that embody the fragility of private loss in the era of “photographic interference.” We hope that these stories and conversations will initiate a new collective memory of September 11, 2001, one that reflects the effects of social difference on wounded cities and their inhabitants. The only appropriate memorialization is one that is at once tough, critical, and visionary: exposing the workings of political structures that exploit disaster for war and profit even while imagining more lifeaffirming modes of social life for the future.

The author is the William Peterfield Trent Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Professor in the Institute for Research on Women and Gender and the second vice president of the Modern Language Association of America.

Campus during the attacks

BY BEN LYONS It was 10:40 AM when the cryptic email arrived from a friend in the financial district: “Safe after the collapse of the towers….”

Sitting in the quiet of Lerner’s fourth floor computer lab, nearly empty at that hour, I found the message mysterious. Towers?

Collapse? What was she talking about? I opened a web browser and typed in the address for the New York Times. No response.

I tried again with NBC, ABC, and other news outlets and was blocked each time by what appeared to be overloaded data lines. Running out to Broadway, I scanned the street for another source of news. It was a glorious day bright with sunshine and just a hint of autumn chill in the air. The few passersby showed no sign of alarm and there were no other visible indications of danger.

ILLUSTRATION BY THUTO DURKAC-SOMO

The contrast between the horror of what I was hearing and the tranquility of Morningside Heights could not have been starker.

STAFF EDITORIAL

Half our lives There are few instances in history that stand as a defining moment for a generation. For many of our parents, that moment was the Vietnam War or the Cuban missile crisis, and for our grandparents, Pearl Harbor.

Sept. 11 was the pivotal moment for our generation. For most undergraduate students, 9/11 occurred halfway through our lives.

We were violently introduced to the fact that our nation—and our life—was not secure simply because it was American.

Ten years later, we still struggle to understand ourselves, our nation, the validity of our actions. This uncertainty is evident in our indecision over the

Iraq War and demonstrated by our uneasy reactions to Osama bin Laden’s death last spring.

As many Columbia students trekked downtown to celebrate his death, we were left wondering if happiness was an appropriate emotion to feel. Was celebrating a death—particularly of a man who caused the loss of American lives and our collective innocence—appropriate?

While some felt that bin Laden’s death marked the end of almost a decade of suffering and American insecurity over our place in the world, we realize that there can be no bookend to 9/11. Ten years later, the war in Iraq has answered few

questions, and we are left to explore the effect that 9/11 has had on us as individuals.

On campus and throughout the nation, we have seen 9/11 both unify and polarize. The president has declared 9/11 a national day of remembrance and service, which has prompted many people to devote time to domestic volunteer work. The outpouring of donations and assistance immediately following the tragedy demonstrates how a city and a nation came together in a time of dire need. However, 9/11 has also been used to divide us as students and as citizens along racial or religious lines, eroding a sense of tolerance that we regard as integral to our national character.

This leaves us in a precarious place where we feel a

tremendous sense of ownership, but possess little knowledge and few examples to help us proceed.

How do we help rebuild a nation that was both literally and metaphorically torn down when we were barely at an age when we could understand the day’s meaning?

The fact that our generation remembers 9/11 as an event that defined, changed, and in some cases shattered our lives should cause us to devote ourselves to something beyond our individual concerns. While we can’t solve all of the world’s problems, we can devote our energy to servicework and remembrance. We can be mindful in our daily actions with the hope that through them, we will contribute to our larger ideals.

I spotted a Con-Edison truck parked on the northbound side of Broadway at 115th street. The back door was open and cables ran from the cabin to a manhole, in which the top of a man’s helmeted head could be seen. A small portable radio perched on the truck’s bumper. I ran over just in time to hear an announcer read news headlines in a surreally calm voice: Planes had flown into the World Trade Center buildings earlier in the morning.

Both towers had now collapsed.

Reports from Washington brought word of a strike on the Pentagon and possibly the White House and Capitol. The contrast between the horror of what I was hearing and the tranquility of Morningside Heights could not have been starker.

Of all the events that day, the one that has stayed with me as much as the attack itself, is the peaceful expressions on the faces of those passersby whom I first encountered in my frantic search for news. In hindsight, they were enjoying the final moments of an era dating all the way back to 1776—the last time

an enemy force struck New York City. (On the foundation blocks of Mathematics Hall, at 117th Street and Broadway, you can see a plaque commemorating a local battle from that event.) But at 10:45 that morning, the peace, which I myself had enjoyed until just ten minutes earlier, was a delusion. The blow had landed. The tsunami of news was en route. It had just reached me and it would come upon each of them within an hour—two at most. When it hit, perceptions of reality would never be the same. Or would they?

My sense is that core understandings of reality on campus have not actually changed that much in the years since 9/11.

For several decades leading up to that day, Columbia defined itself as a haven for those dedicated to lofty human ideals of equality, justice and peace, a place from which rational, reflective truth was spoken to a harsh external world. If anything, the last decade has seen a doubling down on that narrative of the campus as the last haven of sanity in a world of war. But what if the events of September 11 foreshadowed the re-emergence of a more violent historical trend that overwhelms these ideals? How will we respond if another, more severe blow should land? The result might easily be bitter disillusionment and cynicism.

One helpful check against this outcome might be to step back, just a bit, from the binary narrative of a virtuous campus versus a corrupt world and make a frank admission that first, the obstacles to perfect peace and equality are severe; second, that policy makers face a limited range of options in confronting the multifaceted challenges before them; and third, that despite all our best efforts, conditions in the macro may well get worse in our lifetimes. Such an admission should not undermine idealism, but rather ground it in reality and lessen the likelihood of total disillusionment if future events do not conform to our best hopes. Along the way, it may also foster humility, patience and persistence in doing good in the face of disappointment—qualities worth possessing whatever the future holds.

If another blow should land close at hand, such a perspective would also help us respond not only with shock and anger, but with the calm, practical insight that should be the output of an institution like Columbia.

The author is a doctoral student in the history department of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

SEPTEMBER 9, 2011

OPINION

PAGE A5

Humanizing war

BY ALLAN MACLEOD When the Twin Towers were hit, I was playing handball in gym class. While walking to my next class, JROTC, people were chattering in the hallways, and somebody asked me if I had heard about it. In the JROTC classroom the TV was on, which was rare. Boom, fireball, crash, over and over from as many angles as you like. I grew up on movies like Terminator 2 and video games like Wolfenstein 3D, so giant explosions and massive property damage didn’t really faze me.

It took many years to really understand why the event shook people. I didn’t connect with the political rhetoric that came out of Washington afterwards. I didn’t really feel like the nation was existentially threatened. I liked Colin Powell’s Iraq war speech—he’s a hell of an orator—but even then, the scenario he outlined of mobile chemical weapons labs that never park in the same spot twice seemed too fantastic, like something out of a cheesy action movie.

When I chose to enlist, I didn’t feel any great patriotic call. Our integrity as a nation never depended on me killing people in other countries.

I didn’t have any college prospects—my GPA was a 1.17—and I didn’t want to end up as another pothead or meth-head in the rust belt. I wanted to blow shit up and kill people.

Nobody in particular, no ethnic prejudice or anything stupid like that, I just wanted to shoot endless bad guys wearing the same clothes as each other, like in Goldeneye. Maybe pick up their ammo when I ran low.

Dehumanization isn’t something one can limit—you can’t only dehumanize one group. Everyone becomes a nobody after a while.

When I actually got to Iraq in September 2006, the warriors who had been there before me already killed most of those guys—the ones you see out in the open in Call of Duty: Napalm Sticks to Kids. The only people left trying to kill us were hiding. The posters on our walls said “the Iraqi people are not our enemy, but our enemy hides among them.” We tried to find them. One night, we found a bunch of guys sleeping in a house that had reported only an old man and five women on the census. We arrested them. One of them was put on his knees, blindfolded. I

guarded him while we waited for the trucks to come. He was squirming, so we teased him a bit. He kept squirming, so I cocked a pistol to remind him not to get any ideas. He started crying. We found out from our translator that he had recently had knee surgery. I don’t know if he was “Ali Baba,” but none of the guys in Goldeneye ever cried.

I eventually started realizing that the people we kill are humans, too. Sure, a whole lot of them are scum who probably deserve to die, but maybe the next Call of Duty game should have a few boring missions mixed in where you walk into houses and see only scared women holding their children.

On the other hand, players would probably just shoot them and laugh. You can’t learn to understand humanity through a video game. After ten years, “we”—yes, those are anthropology-student quotation marks— are no closer to understanding humanity. Humanity is all that matters, nothing else.

Since most of the Columbia students reading this are curious to know but have been instructed not to ask, no, I never killed anybody. I’m glad about it now. Not because it makes me pure, but because the guys who did often seem a little unhinged. I’ve never really talked with any of them about it. Most of them wouldn’t want to have the conversation, or they already would have, but it seems like they’ve got to either keep people dehumanized in their minds or reconcile with what they did.

It’s very easy to believe that people aren’t human, especially with US military training, and the more time and effort individuals invest in the idea, the harder it is restore a connection to humanity. Dehumanization isn’t something one can limit, either—you can’t only dehumanize one group. It starts that way, but everybody becomes a nobody after a while. It’s lonely to live a life like that. Service member suicides are through the roof, substance abuse rates are up, spousal abuse and divorce are up. Nothing hurts more and inspires self-destructive behavior more than not believing in humanity.

People who see the world through this lens can do anything. The US government, acting on behalf of the American people, supported, trained, armed, and equipped bin Laden against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan as revenge for embarrassment in Vietnam. We built a bonfire to broil them. 9/11 was the bonfire getting out of control, the end result of reckless behavior ultimately based on a belief that humanity doesn’t matter.

KATIE O’SHEA

This illustration originally appeared in the Sept. 13, 2001, edition of Spectator.

Shot heard ’round the world

BY JOOHYUN LEE

The author is a junior in General Studies majoring in MESAAS. He served in the United States Marine Corps.

As a Korean girl who grew up in a very conservative Muslim country and attended a very Christian, all-American school, I distinctly remember 9/11 as an event that changed my world. I remember my slight annoyance at my school for temporarily closing and sending my assignments by email. As a second grader, it was very important to me that my teacher see my work and compliment me on it. I was a bit of an overachiever, and I felt under appreciated at home where my parents could not understand my work or answer my questions.

How I wish I had remained at that stage, worrying about the fact that I was under appreciated instead of growing up and facing the hard facts of what happened on that day.

The grief that this country faced was unthinkable, and at the time, seemed unsurmountable. I remember my American friends quickly arranging flights back to the United States, fearing possible repercussions if they stayed in a Muslim country for much longer. I also remember my childhood friend who is my age, a

French. English Puritans bracketed Dutch settlement to the north and east, in New England and Long Island.

African slaves began arriving in the 1620s, and twentythree Sephardic Jews, refugees from Recifé, came to New Amsterdam aboard the Sainte Catherine in 1654. Early reports filtering back to the Netherlands, the most tolerant society of the seventeenth century, told of Huguenots, Mennonites, Brownists, Presbyterians, Quakers, Catholics, even “many atheists and various other servants of Baal.” The Jews proposed to erect a synagogue, and French Jesuits from Canada mounted several missionary sorties among the Indians. Many colonists blamed the slave uprising of 1712 on Elie Neau, a Huguenot-turned-Anglican and an early advocate for abolition who ran a school for Africans in New York City.

Roman Catholics arrived in greater numbers in the nineteenth century, from places like Ireland, Germany, and Italy. As with other groups, finding their place in the rich tapestry of

American diversity did not always come easy. John Hughes, who became the first archbishop of New York (and the founder of what is now Fordham University), protested the use of the Protestant-inflected King James Version of the Bible in the city’s public schools. His objections prompted the “great school wars” of the 1840s, when Protestants threatened Catholics and their churches.

Hughes made his case for toleration by appealing to the United States Constitution and to Americans’ better selves: “Is this state of things, fellow-citizens, and worthy of you, worthy of our country, worthy of our just and glorious constitution?”

The vicinity of lower Manhattan was also the venue for signing of one of the most significant pieces of legislation in the twentieth century.

At Liberty Island on October 3, 1965, Lyndon Johnson signed the Hart-Cellar Act, which removed the immigration quotas established by the JohnsonReed Act of 1924 and once again opened the United States to immigrants. The legislation, the president declared in the

native Indonesian who now is married and recently had her first child, having no opinion on the matter whatsoever, even when we were older. We never talked about it because I knew she was Muslim and we would end up disagreeing. But it was still there, that elephant in the room that nobody seemed brave enough to address because it was too painful.

Although I was not American, I began to notice that 9/11 was affecting my life.

I remember the hidden hostility between the Indonesians and the Americans in our little community, and me, the little Korean girl, having to somehow awkwardly bridge that gap.

Although I was not American, I began to notice that 9/11 was affecting my life.

It is hard to believe that 10 years have passed since then, since I sat with my family,

watched the news and received the phone call that I should not attend school until further notice. I don’t think that people have “forgotten” what happened, the lives that were lost, or the people 9/11 affected. I think the pain is still there, perhaps dampened a little, but still there.

For this reason, I don’t think 9/11 can ever be talked about without emotion, but I think we have now somehow recovered.

Of course it would be insensitive to say that everyone has recovered completely. But as a somewhat marginal observer, I feel that people no longer feel hatred when they talk about 9/11. Instead they seem to feel more regret and sorrow at what happened. We now know that revenge seems to do no good at the cost of more innocent lives, and almost everyone has stepped back and seen the situation as what it is: something unspeakably horrible that is now over.

It is over. It did leave pain, but now all we can do is remember and honor the people who were affected by 9/11.

The fear is no longer there.

We are no longer scared. We know that 9/11 cannot be blamed on any one group or people or any one religion. We can no

longer use 9/11 as an excuse to insult groups of people who had nothing to do with that day.

9/11 is an event that happened because a small group of men decided to bring destruction. It was a small group of men, not an entire country, not all the members of any religion. 9/11 is not about this country versus that country, this religion versus that religion.

It is about the mourning the loss of life and the acknowledgement that the world is broken--and humans cannot fix that.

To be honest, I feel like I have no right to an opinion on 9/11, being Korean and not having lost anyone I knew that day, and having grown up on the other side of the world when the plane hit the towers on 9/11. But if I could choose an opinion it would be this: Americans have recovered. They have constructed a memorial for the lives lost, and I watch New Yorkers walk by it without giving it a second glance. It is not that they don’t care, but they know that it is over and there is nothing that they can do. The only thing they can do is remember. And they are doing that well.

have sometimes been targeted, and a cynical administration used the attacks as a pretext to rush the United States into two irrelevant and ill-considered wars. And surely the most reprehensible consequence of 9/11 was the use of torture against those the president deemed “enemy combatants.”

But Americans themselves, sooner or later, rise to their better selves and come to embrace the principles of toleration and respect for minorities encoded into our charter documents and symbolized by that tiny parcel of land in lower Manhattan. Not universally, to be sure, and far too belatedly in the case of women and racial minorities, but we Americans generally come around.

The proposed Islamic cultural center, Park51, provides a case in point. Initially derided as the “Ground Zero Mosque,” even though it is not primarily a mosque and it wasn’t at Ground Zero, Park51 has gradually won acceptance. Perhaps we should read some significance into the fact that the loudest critics of Park51, notably Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich, are not

New Yorkers and represent a political movement not generally associated with the rights of minorities.

The most ringing defense of the proposed Islamic center came from Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York and a Jew. “We would betray our values—and play into our enemies’ hands—if we were to treat Muslims differently than [sic] anyone else,” the mayor declared. “In fact, to cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists—and we should not stand for that.”

Well said—and utterly consistent with the rich history of toleration and multiculturalism associated with the “sacred ground” of lower Manhattan.

The author is a Columbia College first-year.

Sacred space

BY RANDALL BALMER As a historian, I regard lower Manhattan as something akin to sacred ground—not simply because of the awful tragedy that took place there on a crystalline September morning a decade ago or because of some explicit religious valence associated with that place. Lower Manhattan is “sacred” because, throughout American history, this has been the proving ground for our highest ideals as a people and as a nation: our tolerance and embrace of diversity.

Consider. In the span of nearly a century, Giovanni da Verrazano, an Italian immigrant in the service of France, discovered the inlet into New York Harbor, and Henry Hudson, an Englishman under contract to the Dutch East India Company, nosed the Half Moon through the same Narrows and struggled north on the river that now bears his name. The first group of settlers to embark on Manhattan were Walloons, French-speaking Belgians, followed shortly by a modest influx of Dutch, Germans, and

shadow of the Statue of Liberty, “corrects a cruel and enduring wrong in the conduct of the American Nation.”

Whether they knew it or not, then, the terrorists who guided those fuel-gorged jets into the World Trade Center were targeting the very heart of America—not because of the buildings’ association with business or commerce, but because their location in lower Manhattan has long symbolized America’s noblest ideals.

The World Trade Center’s location in lower Manhattan has long symbolized America’s noblest ideals.

Our response in the decade since 9/11 has been spotty at times but generally consistent with those ideals. On the negative side of the ledger, Muslims

The author is a professor of American Religion History at Barnard College. He is also is a member of the Graduate Faculty of Arts and Sciences and has taught in the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.

The first of his thirteen books was entitled “A Perfect Babel of Confusion: Dutch Religion and English Culture in the Middle Colonies.”

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REMEMBERING 9/11

SEPTEMBER 9, 2011

Glory and tragedy alike star in film screenings about New York playing all around the city

BY JOSEPH POMP Spectator Staff Writer A new talking-head documentary featuring the politicians, victims, and officers that were hit the hardest by the attacks. A male melodrama, initially overlooked but now considered a modern classic, about a convict’s last day free in Manhattan only months after 9/11. An iconic paean to the city by one of its most popular residents. These are some of the films that will be presented free at cinemas around New York in remembrance of September 11, 2001.

“25th Hour” is heartwrenching as a time capsule of New York still reeling from 9/11.

The Film Society of Lincoln Center (Walter Reade Theater, 165 W. 65th St., between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue) presents two movies from 2002 that, to varying degrees, deal with the trauma that 9/11 inflicted upon New York.

The film “9/11,” screening at noon, had a completely incidental genesis. On the morning of 9/11, brothers Jules and Gedeon Naudet—documentarians from France—were filming a New York City firefighter as the planes struck the Twin Towers. They captured this horrific moment and proceeded to make a film about the firefighters who had

the courage to enter Ground Zero. The screening will be followed by a discussion with Christian Delage, a historian and documentary filmmaker, and Peter Goodrich, a professor at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York.

Later, following the 7:45 p.m. showing of Spike Lee’s masterpiece “25th Hour,” the FSLC will play host to Lee, producer Jon Kilik, Edward Norton, who stars in the film as the anti-hero Monty Brogan, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, who plays Brogan’s childhood friend.

Brogan is a drug dealer who has one last day in New York before heading upstate to spend seven years in prison. Heart-wrenching both as a character study and a time capsule of New York still reeling in pain from 9/11, the film also boasts a remarkable ensemble cast, with Rosario Dawson, Barry Pepper, and Hoffman supporting Norton’s tour-deforce performance. Tickets for each screening will be available at the box office beginning one hour before the show.

A few stops further down the 1 train, Film Forum (209 W. Houston St., between Sixth Avenue and Varick Street) presents “Voices of 9/11,” a new film produced by Time Magazine, throughout the afternoon and evening (shows at 1, 2:50, 4:40, 6:30, 8:10, 9:45 p.m.). It features interviews with Tom Brokaw, Rudolph Giuliani, Valerie Plame, and other key figures in the aftermath of 9/11.

Film Forum has also set aside the first two weeks of its September repertory calendar

WKCR reflects on a transmitter lost in the September 11 attacks

BY ALLISON MALECHA Spectator Senior Staff Writer Everyone knows the principal things that fell on 9/11—two one-hundred story, steel-framed towers, and too many lives inside. Fewer might know that the WKCR radio transmitter also fell that day, from the spot it had held for almost 20 years. A decade later, the student-run station can still feel that loss.

Ellen Walkington is WKCR’s Publicity Director and a DJ. “Though I came to the station in 2008, many years after we lost that transmitter, the impact of the events can still be felt in some aspects of the station,” Walkington said in an email. “On-air fundraisers are so crucial to the survival of the station that whenever we gather for a fundraiser—a massive, nearly round-the-clock effort—the room fills with a nervous energy.”

The unfortunate effect of the attacks on WKCR was further punctuated by the fact that the station had been having an especially optimistic year up until that point. “In the summer of 2001, students were excited to move into state-of-the-art studios in Lerner Hall,” Walkington said. “After the attacks, WKCR was off the air with no idea how we would broadcast again.”

Indeed, the station was on the brink of extinction for three years—until 2004, when WKCR received federal aid specifically allocated to stations who had lost equipment in the tragedy. They were then finally able to set up

a new, stable transmitter at 4 Times Square.

In the interim, the station’s chief engineer Richard Koziol had set up a transmitter that broadcasted from Carman Hall. According to Walkington, though, this could only reach 20% of the station’s pre-attack following—a huge detriment especially because WKCR depends largely on on-air fundraisers to stay afloat.

Walkington is quick to put the loss into perspective, noting that WKCR was just one of so many organizations affected by September 11th. Luckily, only the signal—not any team-member— was ever in danger of dying.

Of the four stations broadcasting from the World Trade Center at the time—the others were WPAT-FM 93.1, WNYC 93.9, and WKTU 103.5—WKCR brought up the rear in terms of recovery time.

“We were one of the last stations to regain a broadcasting radius that approximated our old one,” Walkington said.

Radio transmitters are able to broadcast out to further radii the higher up they are. The benefit of having been on top of the South Tower’s 110 floors is evident. Now that an even taller skyscraper is under construction at One World Trade Center, it raises the question of which radio stations will be given antenna space—and whether WKCR hopes to be in that group.

Ben Young, WKCR Director of Broadcasting and Operations, answered affirmatively in a statement to the New York Times: “It will be a welcome return.”

ILLUSTRATION BY REBECCA SCHWARZ COVER PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY ZARA CASTANY AND JEREMY BLEEKE BACK PAGE IMAGE FROM FLICKR / CHARLES CARPER

COURTESY OF UNITED ARTISTS/PHOTOFEST

CITYSCAPES | Woody Allen’s black-and-white masterpiece “Manhattan” beautifully portrays less turbulent times in the city’s history. for a series of films in which the NYPD is given a starring role. The Al Pacino vehicle “Serpico” (1973) will screen at 1 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 11, but the better deal is the twofor-one double feature of Jules Dassin films. The first, “The

Naked City” (1948) is a quintessential New York noir film that was groundbreaking for its on-location shoot. This will be followed by the more obscure detective thriller “Pay or Die!” (1960), which James Lardner, co-author of “NYPD: A City

and Its Police,” will introduce at 5:30 p.m.

Students looking for a more lighthearted cinematic ode to New York can head to Brooklyn, where BAMcinématek (30 Lafayette Ave., between Ashland Place and St. Felix Street) will be screening

Woody Allen’s “Manhattan” (1979) in all its widescreen glory for free at 2, 4:30, 7, and 9:30 p.m.

Arguably New York’s quintessential city symphony, it’s a worthy companion to the more somber remembrances of 9/11 that will be taking place this weekend.

Columbia responded with academic, social shifts COLUMBIA from page A2 Cannon wrote in an email. “Yes, I was in New York, a city I had grown to absolutely love, but I was also safe, and not directly experiencing the devastation happening downtown. It was hard to sort through all of that.”

Quigley and Zvi Galil, thenEngineering School dean, met in different dorms on the evening of the attacks to coordinate responses among Student Affairs, the Chaplain’s office, counseling services, and residential staff.

The psychological impacts of the attacks remained a focus in the following weeks and years.

Julia Sheehy, associate director of Barnard’s Furman Counseling Center, said that not one student came in on the day of the attacks.

“It was eerily quiet. The next day, we were very busy,” she said.

By December, Dorothy Denburg, Barnard’s dean at the time of the attacks, said that “things had fallen into a rhythm.”

“The semester was back to normal. There were a few students, first-years, who withdrew, but by December, people had moved on to a normal state,” she said.

But the attacks did incite new fears and put students on edge.

More commonplace accidents, like a plane crash in Queens a few months after the attacks, caused greater-than-average concern.

“About two years after September 11, 2001, there was a major blackout in Manhattan … the wounds were so new and everyone thought that there might have been some terrorism involved in the blackout,” Koonin said. “As much as we wanted to be tough and put September 11 behind us, I think everyone still carried with them that experience.”

Then-MSA president Syed remembers being attacked off campus after the attacks, by a homeless person who threw a beer bottle at her feet and yelled, “Go back to where you came from.” She said that MSA made it its mission to prevent backlash against Muslim students on campus.

“I wanted everyone to stay calm and not forget that the Muslim girl living in the dorm across the hall from them is still the same person they borrowed a textbook from the day before—that they didn’t suddenly see us in a different light because of the actions of a handful of people who do not represent Islam,” Syed said.

“There were some really negative things that grew out of it, like a culture of fear in the nation,” Santo said of the attacks. “I think

one of the nice things for those of us organizing responses on campus is that there was a certain amount of control we could have over the way Columbia University responded to it.”

Despite rising anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States, students and administrators insisted that there were no hate crimes on campus in the aftermath.

But Michael Novielli, CC ’02 and then-president of the Columbia College Student Council, said that there were some bias incidents following the attacks.

“At the same time, even at a place like Columbia where students are taught to think objectively, to respect diversity—even at a place like this—unfortunately, there were incidents of bias, slurs, and there was a feeling that some students were insensitive and that some members of Columbia still have a lot to do in those areas,” he said. academic identity in flux Among administrators and alumni, a big concern was whether the attacks would affect the number of people applying to Columbia, according to Koonin, who was also a student member of the Columbia Alumni Board.

“I think the big question was, ‘What would be the immediate impact of the attacks on the incoming class?’” he said. “A lot of students arrived as freshmen and within a few weeks they have this traumatic experience.”

At Columbia, the number of applications continued to increase the next year, though Quigley said the rate of increase slowed.

Across the street at Barnard, the attacks may have contributed to a drop in applications in 2002, from 4,075 the year before to 3,685.

It took until 2004 for applications to climb over 2001 levels.

Still, Rupp didn’t remember hearing that administrators were concerned about the effects of the attacks on the University’s prestige.

“I don’t remember it as a focus of attention or an anxiety,” he said. “New York as a whole has only become more of a global magnet and national magnet over the years since 9/11.”

Academically, Columbia has seen increased interest in international relations and security policy. Robert Shapiro, then-chair of the political science department at Columbia, said that Columbia had already been offering courses on the Middle East and terrorism, but that the attacks increased their relevance.

“After 9/11 we were even more interested and were obliged to offer those type of courses,” he said.

At the School of International and Public Affairs, the attacks had a more drastic impact on course offerings. Austin Long, assistant professor of International Relations, has been teaching courses on security issues such as counterterrorism, intelligence, and weapons of mass destruction since 2009. He said that the attacks were the driving force behind his appointment.

“There are many steps to get there, but I would not have had a job at Columbia had it not been for 9/11,” said Long, who has spent time with U.S. special operations forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Long and Richard Betts, Arnold Saltzman Professor of War and Peace Studies, are the only full-time faculty members who specialize in security policy.

Betts has been at Columbia since the early 1990s.

The attacks also changed the course of individual faculty members’ research. Kimberly Marten, former chair of the political science department, said that she was inspired to study terrorism more deeply upon discovering that her friends knew victims in the attacks. A few years later, she started teaching a new colloquium on political violence and terrorism.

“I wanted to understand the causes of terrorism itself and I wanted to have a better understanding of how to deal with terrorism,” Marten said.

Some, however, still feel that gaps remain in the University’s academic structure. Dalton expressed concern that neither Barnard nor Columbia have a full peace studies program, something he and other professors had tried to initiate in the early 1980s.

“We tried very hard and we failed,” he said, attributing it to a lack of administrative support at the time. But 20 years later and with different administrators in place, “9/11 certainly should have sparked that,” he said.

The attacks taking place just a few miles from campus also provided an extra push for extensive emergency procedures.

Dan Held, spokesperson for Columbia Facilities, said that officials meet regularly to develop and practice the implementation of emergency plans, including disaster responses and evacuations.

He added that the University’s plan includes a tactical Emergency Operations Center, with emergency management team members ready to take appropriate action.

Quigley said that coordinating

the University’s response has become increasingly important.

“Likewise, reaching out across the school boundaries so that Barnard, the College of Engineering, General Studies, graduate schools … so that everybody has a common body of information and everybody has been reached very quickly,” he said. a new skyline For many, the attacks were a defining moment in Columbia’s history and continue to resurface in a number of ways. This year, students, faculty, and administrators will be holding a vigil, panels, and forums to remember and discuss the attacks. The Universitywide vigil will be held Sunday morning on Low Plaza, and the four undergraduate student councils will be co-hosting a commemorative event.

“I think I had a sense of safety in the city and this country which was shaken, and in my lifetime, it’s become a defining day and it’s just sort of embedded in our psyches now,” Furman assistant director Sheehy said. “It comes up for each of us in I think sometimes random, surprising and variable ways.”

Interestingly, the attacks provided some positive memories as well, of togetherness amid the feelings of chaos and intense personal loss.

Chaudhry said that she was inspired to join the Student Governing Board and the Muslim Students Association “just because of the way that I ended up discovering my community that week.”

“It was a time when I would say I was incredibly proud of the Columbia community, the way that the students and faculty and administrators pulled together,” Chaplain Davis said.

“One of the many examples that I can cite in my 16 years where the Columbia community demonstrates that it is able to take care of each other.”

“We weep with people at Columbia. We stand with people at Columbia. We fight with people at Columbia,” she said.

Ten years later, Weber says she feels safer than ever in the city, but symbols of the attacks still haunt her.

Now, when she looks up into the sky downtown, another image stays with her—the Freedom Tower, rising.

“It does give you a slight jolt every time I see it and see the change that’s happening to the skyline.” madina.toure @columbiaspectator.com

SEPTEMBER 9, 2011

REMEMBERING 9/11

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After the attacks, students coped in different ways—by attending candlelight vigils, speeches from deans and other students, or just being with friends before resuming classes the next day.

Teammates remember Ugolyn, former Lion killed in attacks

BY SPENCER GYORY AND MRINAL MOHANKA Columbia Daily Spectator There is a mural in Columbus, Ohio, near a soup kitchen honoring those that were lost on September 11th, 2001. The mural includes the face of Tyler Ugolyn, CC ’01, with a basketball and his favorite quote: “Yesterday was history, tomorrow is a mystery, and today is a gift from God.” It took a little over four years before the Ugolyn family could muster the emotional strength to go and visit the mural. When they did so as a family, they crossed the street to the soup kitchen and saw that the playground there had hoops that were tattered.

They saw that there were potholes in the parking lot. At that very moment, they knew what Tyler would like to do if he was still there with them, and that moment gave birth to what would be called the Ugolyn Foundation.

Founded by his parents, Victor and Diane, and his younger brother Trevor, the Foundation was established in memory of the 23-yearold Columbia graduate who was employed at the World Trade Center as an investment analyst for Fred Alger Management on the 93rd floor of the first tower.

Ugolyn was more than just a NCAA athlete recruited to play basketball, though. He received letters from over 50 schools and was offered the chance to play for national powerhouse Kansas. When attending Columbia, he helped found a weekly basketball clinic for Harlem youngsters, while also spending time as a volunteer at a soup kitchen. He was a man of strong faith, being very active in the Catholic community at Columbia. He became a Eucharistic minister and helped found the

Columbia Catholic Athletes group.

Besides being devoted to helping society at large, Ugolyn also had an impact on several individuals who were close to him.

“I think leaders are born, not made,” Victor Ugolyn, Tyler’s father, said. “He was always a leader in life no matter what he did. He was charismatic, had a wonderful personality, a wonderful smile.

One of his close friends said he was the ‘centerpiece.’ When he walked into a room, everyone paid attention. People followed him.”

One of those who paid attention was Michael Merley, Ugolyn’s classmate and teammate from the Lions basketball team. He fondly remembers Tyler as a remarkable individual who lived his life to the fullest and inspired those around him.

“When he walked in the room, everyone paid attention.

People followed him.”

—Victor Ugolyn , father “In times of death it is a natural response to make the person a superhuman—but Ty really was a remarkable guy,” Merley said. “For me the best way to honor Tyler’s memory is to make sure I realize what carpe diem means to me: seize the day because I don’t know how many I will have.”

Whether it was a 5:15 a.m. basketball practice after his sophomore season with the Lions, or pulling on his

number 34 jersey for a coach at Ridgewood High School who was disliked by the rest of the team, Ugolyn always had a smile on his face and saw the glass as half-full. He has left an indelible mark on many around him, including classmates Jon Krug and Andy Kirwan, who both brandish a number 34 tattoo on their arms.

The Foundation seeks to carry on the various aspects of Ugolyn’s legacy: his love of the game, his passion for helping youngsters achieve their dreams both on and off the court, and his impact on those around him. The Foundation commits itself to supporting youth basketball, with a primary focus on refurbishing courts for and providing financial support to characterbuilding educational programs and skills clinics for children in urban settings.

The Foundation is now officially part of the NCAA Final Four Men’s Championship Community Initiative which takes place during championship weekend. It dedicates a renovated indoor or outdoor court, “Tyler’s Court,” each year to the community where the Final Four championship game is held, combined with a motivational clinic for children there. Each of Tyler’s Courts bears a plaque that reads one of Tyler’s sayings, “I just love playing the game.” The Foundation has renovated courts in San Antonio, Detroit, Indianapolis, Houston, Springfield, and Ridgefield (where Ugolyn grew up), and next year will do the same in New Orleans. It has also remained close to Columbia and the Lions basketball program, sponsoring a scholarship in Tyler’s name at Columbia College. The Foundation hopes to someday renovate a court within Morningside Heights.

Paul Anderer, Columbia’s deBary/Class of ’41 Professor of Asian Humanities, was one

NEVER FORGOTTEN

of the faculty members closest to Ugolyn, and he remembers not only Ugolyn’s prowess in the classroom and on the court, but his concern for those around him. In July 2001, after Ugolyn had graduated and was about to start his job in the World Trade Center, Anderer, his son Pete—a rising sophomore on the Davidson basketball team—and Ugolyn found themselves on the same team in a Levien pick-up game.

Anderer remembers how Tyler grabbed a defensive rebound and in a single graceful motion made a perfect outlet pass to Pete, streaking towards their basket. However, it was something that happened soon after that really made the occasion memorable for the professor.

“He [Tyler] and I watched, aghast, as Pete was dragged down from behind by a careless and brutal foul,” Anderer said in an email.

Anderer realized what was at stake as Pete lay on the ground, having sustained a serious knee injury, and was furious. But it was Ugolyn who ran out ahead of him, in defense of his teammate and friend.

“Tyler said things that I am sure stayed with the guy who committed that foul,” Anderer said. “I believe he never fouled anyone quite like that again. A month later, Tyler himself was dragged down, deliberately and tragically. We could do nothing to pick him up, but can only recall, with affection and gratitude, the wide smile, strong presence, and sense of honor Tyler shared with us in life.”

The Tyler Ugolyn Foundation is a tax-exempt, non-profit, charitable organization approved by the IRS under section 501(C)(3). EIN: 06-1632382.

All contributions are tax-deductible. Contributions can be sent to: “The Tyler Ugolyn Foundation”/ 17 Cardinal Court/ Ridgefield, CT 06877.

Student EMTs split over decision to head to Ground Zero CAVA from page A3 emergency service teams from all over the tri-state area showed up in Manhattan that week, but the thousands of victims, who rescuers believed trapped beneath the rubble, never emerged.

Dan Karlin, CC ’01, GSAS ’05, and a CAVA alumnus, drove into the city that day from western Massachusetts where he’d been working at a summer camp. He said his parents in Westchester, N.Y. thought he was crazy when he swung by his house to pick up equipment.

“At that point it was the momentum. It was the thing I had to do. I had to be a part of it,” Karlin said.

He stayed at Ground Zero, which rescuers were calling “the pile,” for three days straight.

Mostly, he said, he helped with logistics and stood in a line of volunteers and rescue workers who passed debris from person to person. The black soot in the streets was eight or nine

inches deep, and the pile continued to burn for all three days that he was there, saturating the air in smoke.

He only treated one patient— someone who was knocked unconscious while passing a beam through the line.

“It feels unfair,” Karlin said.

“Real people died very suddenly and there wasn’t much anybody could do.”

Just off the Westside Highway at Stuyvesant High School, Gorman said he felt a similar sense of helplessness.

Classrooms in the school had been converted into operating rooms, and medical personnel and policemen were everywhere. Gorman said that sitting and waiting all day felt awful.

“This is why I got the training—to help in an emergency like this, and I couldn’t,” he said. “There was nothing for me to do.”

Firefighters came in with their eyes swollen shut from dust and Gorman administered

eyewashes and treated a gash on one man. As frustrated as he was, he said going downtown probably helped him deal with the day psychologically.

“I honestly think all of these people were looking for some way to help, and having some ability to put yourself into the relief effort made that day much easier for those of us who were down there,” he said.

“This is why I got the training— to help in an emergency like this, and I couldn’t.”

—Tom Gorman, CC ’04 The next day in his Contemporary Civilization class, Gorman said his classmates

applauded him for his courage.

“I remember feeling really embarrassed that people were interested or excited about my story. I just told everyone that all I did was eat Red Cross bologna sandwiches all afternoon,” he said.

Gorman said he and his friends felt ashamed for years.

“For a while afterwards we felt like we didn’t do enough,” he said. “But now I see there just wasn’t anything for us to do. There was nothing any of us could have done.”

As the years have passed, the EMTs say fewer and fewer people ask them about being in New York during the attacks. Karlin said he still struggles to articulate the way he feels about those events.

“Looking back at anything you did 10 years ago just feels like looking back at another person,” he said. “But those are three days I feel particularly detached from.” news@columbiaspectator.com

ZARA CASTANY / SENIOR STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

REMEMBERING | Ribbons, shrines, and new construction provide daily reminders to New Yorkers about all that happened at Ground Zero 10 years ago.

NEWS

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 9 • PAGE B1

New plans for closed science libraries

Students teaching FemSex off the books

BY JACKIE CARRERO Spectator Senior Staff Writer A group of Columbia women is looking to bring candid discussions about sex out of the bedroom and into the classroom.

On Wednesday night, 55 students gathered in the basement of Carman Hall for the first installment of an unofficial, student-led class on female sexuality, called “FemSex” by its facilitators.

One of the class’s facilitators, Sarah Camiscoli, CC ’12, said that its atypical learning style will offer students the opportunity to thoroughly explore issues ranging from body image to masturbation, in a way they might not in a more academic setting.

“In my mind, FemSex was about offering a space to meld the depth of the academic perspective with the intensity and rawness of personal experience,” Camiscoli said in an email.

The class is facilitated by nine students, who based it on a similar class at the University of California, Berkeley. It meets for two hours on Sundays and two hours on Wednesdays.

Another student facilitator, Lauren Herold, CC ’12, said that the dynamics in FemSex discussions are completely different from those in a normal classroom.

“It’s very different from the kind of academic style we have at Columbia,” Herold said.

“The student leaders aren’t experts. We all have different levels of experience with the issues.”

FemSex facilitator Kia Walton, CC ’12, said developing the class is more than just a way to fill free time during her senior year.

Eighth-floor Pupin Hall renovations possible

BY HENRY WILLSON AND SAMMY ROTH Columbia Daily Spectator

PHOEBE LYTLE / SENIOR STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

AN EDUCATION

|

From left, facilitators and seniors Andrea Folds, Kia Walton, Sarah Camiscoli, Lauren Herold, and Genesis Garcia.

“For me FemSex is necessary. There are so many ways that we use our power in such harmful ways,” Walton said.

“We can channel that energy if we pointed our time and our minds to learning about our bodies.”

She added that the class also opens up a discussion about being a sexual being “that had sort of been put under a tarp.”

FemSex is currently not recognized by Columbia as a class or a student group, and its leaders have mixed visions of where they should take the course from here. Herold sees its lack of a formal structure as something that adds to its appeal.

“We don’t deal with bureaucracy, and it reflects the non-hierarchical nature of FemSex,” she said. “Some

feminist ideas about hierarchy link [it] to ideas of power and knowledge which classically are masculine.”

Walton said that the course not being recognized by the University makes it challenging for the facilitators to get funding and find a space large enough in which to meet. But she added that there are advantages to being not recognized—for instance, the facilitators don’t have to spend time working with Columbia administrators, time they say could be better used developing the course.

“I think if we can get support and funding and security for room booking that would be nice, but in terms of going to extra meetings, I don’t particularly want that,” Walton said.

But Camiscoli envisions

making FemSex a more structured class.

“That means a lot of work next semester chatting with administration, and potentially making FemSex—or maybe student-run courses in general—available for credit under a faculty supervisor,” Camiscoli said in an email.

Some students said they had felt the need for a class like FemSex. Powell explained that on Wednesday night, a firstyear friend of hers was approached by a roommate with very basic questions about sex.

“She asked her, ‘Since you’re not a virgin anymore, do you bleed all the time?’” Powell said.

Christina Eliopoulos, BC ’14, said that a class about sexuality is an improvement on New Student Orientation Program

discussions about sexual consent, as the optional class will provide a better learning environment than the mandatory NSOP sessions.

“The people attending that class will want to learn,” Eliopoulos said. “It’s important that you have the will to go.”

And anyone can go, Walton said—­­­­FemSex might be short for female sexuality, but men are free to attend.

“No topic is limited to a single gender orientation,” Walton said. “Yes, men don’t bleed every month, but what are the associations with menstruation? It gets into expressions of emotion.”

Karla Jimenez contributed reporting. jackie.carrero @columbiaspectator.com

Locals, comedy fans look to make 121st St. block ‘George Carlin Way’

BY FINN VIGELAND Spectator Senior Staff Writer As a 12-year-old, Jonathan Abikzer, sitting in the back of the bus on his way up to summer camp, delighted in listening to the “seven dirty words” track on George Carlin’s album.

“He pushed boundaries, and I liked that,” Abikzer, a Teachers College doctoral candidate, said of the comedian.

“Twelve is a rebellious age. It resonated with me.”

A petition to add Carlin’s name to the block has collected 3,000 signatures in four days.

Abikzer now lives on West 121st Street, where Carlin grew up, and is one of 3,000 signatories on a growing petition to name the street after his childhood idol. Fans of the legendary comedian want to add Carlin’s name to the 500 block of West 121st Street, where Carlin grew up in the Miami, building number 519.

Carlin’s daughter, the writer Kelly Carlin, told the Village Voice, “My dad loved his neighborhood deeply and, you know, I think it’s important that New Yorkers know where he came from.”

The Change.org petition

was started on Monday by “The Daily Show” comedian Kevin Bartini.

Leta Weintraub, who lives in the building next to the Miami, said that residents at their last building meeting seemed interested in adding Carlin’s name to the block.

“People [in the building] would love to see that happen,” she said. “But I think the city is a little annoyed over all the different street names—for one, all the money that goes into the extra signs.”

The process of co-naming a street—since “George Carlin Way” would not supersede 121st Street—requires City Council approval.

Weintraub said she personally didn’t have strong feelings about honoring Carlin. “I’ve read his autobiography. I always liked him,” she said. “He was a very clever comedian. I don’t think he was that great a person, but that’s a different story.”

Trey and Sarah Wilson, who moved to the block just a week ago, are divided over the issue. The couple, both Teachers College students, said they were “appreciative” of the comedian, but Trey said he thought adding Carlin’s name to the ranks of Malcolm X and Frederick Douglass— both of whom are namesakes for avenues just a few blocks away—would be “a weird juxtaposition.”

But because one block of a smaller street isn’t quite as much of an undertaking, his wife was

ZARA CASTANY / SENIOR STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

COMEDY CORNER | George Carlin grew up in the Miami, a building on 121st Street just north of Teachers College, where petitioners are looking to name the block after the famous comedian. more in favor of the change. “I would want to see the crux of the argument, but I think it would be good,” she said.

Carlin’s most famous act involved seven words that were—and still are, by FCC

rules—unfit for television. But fans say his own name should be getting more exposure.

“It’s interesting that a whole generation doesn’t know who he was,” Abikzer said. “They should know who

OPINION, PAGE B6

SPORTS, PAGE B8

EVENTS

Boy meets (Barnard) world

President Bollinger’s Tenth Annual Fun Run Men’s Soccer tries to stay hot in New Mexico Run a 5K in Morningside Heights, with President Bollinger—wearing shorts.

Barnard is no longer an exclusively female college.

Anarchy in the CU

One of Columbia’s most famous professors was also one of its most radical.

he is. It’s important to be able to say what you want to say.

He pointed out the stupidity in why you can’t say those words.” finn.vigeland @columbiaspectator.com

More than two years after four science libraries were closed to make way for the Northwest Corner Building’s new Science and Engineering Library, there are plans to convert at least two of those spaces for new uses.

Columbia employees with knowledge of the departments said that the old psychology library has been ceded back to the psychology department, which is developing plans for the space, and that the physics department is working toward transforming the old physics/ astronomy library into study space.

“We’re sorely in need of a space for outside speakers to come and be able to give a seminar.”

—Gregory Homison, director of laboratories for biology department

Those two libraries, along with the chemistry library and the biology library, were closed 27 months ago. Spectator reported last December that then-Provost Claude Steele was still deciding how to allocate the space, frustrating science professors who said their departments were starved for rooms.

Laura Williams, assistant to psychology department chair Niall Bolger, said that the department was notified in midAugust that before leaving Columbia, Steele had decided to provide the space to psychology to use as it pleased. Steele declined to comment for this story, citing a desire “not to interfere with negotiations the current provost may have underway.”

Williams said that the department is developing plans for how to use the space—all 2,790 square feet of it—and will announce them later this semester.

As for the physics/astronomy space, the physics department is in the early stages of working with the Arts and Sciences administration to budget funds for a renovation of the entire eighth floor of Pupin Hall, according to Randy Torres, an administrative assistant in the physics department.

That would include transforming the old library into collaborative research space and offices for science students.

“There’s very limited space for students to get their work done,” Torres said.

But the biology department has still not received a decision from the provost’s office on how to use its former library space, according to Gregory Homison, the director SEE LIBRARIES, page B2

WEATHER

Today

Tomorrow

Starts on College Walk, 8:15-10:15 a.m.

After a 3-0 start, the Lions will play a pair of games against the University of New Mexico and Missouri State University this weekend in a New Mexico invitational.

Ten Years Later: 9/11, the US and the World Five professors will present on terrorism, counter-terror efforts, and their intersections with research.

IAB 1501, 9 a.m.-1 p.m.

83°/ 69° 79°/ 66°

PAGE B2

NEWS

Uses for former bio, chem libraries still unclear LIBRARIES from B1 of research and technical services for the Northwest Corner Building and director of laboratories for the biology department.

Homison added that the space could be well-used as a seminar classroom, seating up to 100 people. The biology department’s current seminar space, he said, is inadequate because it is small and suffers from ventilation problems.

“We’re sorely in need of a space for outside speakers to

come and be able to give a seminar to students and faculty,” he said.

Homison said that the biology department submitted a plan to the administration two years ago to convert the space to a department lecture hall, potentially using a $15 million grant from the National Institutes of Health. But when Columbia was not awarded the grant, the plan fell through.

Since the department does not have the funds to revamp the space on its own, Homison hopes that it can at least be converted

into a regular classroom.

“We’ll cross our fingers,” Homison said. “It’s not our decision, that’s the frustrating part.”

The chemistry library also remains closed. A University spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment Thursday on if and when Interim Provost John Coatsworth will make a decision about how the former biology and chemistry library spaces will be used, and on when the former physics and astronomy spaces will be revamped. news@columbiaspectator.com

SEPTEMBER 9, 2011

SEPTEMBER 9, 2011

SPORTS

PAGE B3

sports briefly Field Hockey Following a strong performance in its 4-2 win over La Salle last Saturday, the Columbia field hockey team hopes to carry its momentum into Sunday’s non-conference match-up against the Monmouth Hawks.

The Lions (1-1) recovered from their season-opening loss to Drexel with the help of junior forward Gabby Kozlowski’s two goals and junior goalie Christie O’Hara’s 11 saves two days later against La Salle.

The Light Blue will need another strong performance in the cage by O’Hara, named an Ivy League Honor Roll player this week, when the team travels to West Long Branch, N.J. to face the Hawks (1-3), who lost to Columbia, 2-0, last season.

Monmouth, coming off a 3-1 loss to William & Mary, will play Lehigh today before facing the Lions.

—Steven Lau

Women’s Golf It’s back to the green for the Columbia women’s golf team as it tees off the fall 2011 season with the Towson Women’s Invitational in Phoenix, Md. on Sunday and Monday.

This is the first year the Light Blue will compete in the Towson Women’s Invitational, and Columbia is the only one of the Ancient Eight scheduled to be a part of the competition’s 16-team field.

After a fifth-place finish in last year’s Ivy League Championship, the Lions are hoping for a strong start this season to pave the way for a repeat of the success in 2007, when they were crowned Ivy champions.

Sophomore Michelle Piyapattra, who was named first team all-Ivy League last year and qualified for the U.S. Women’s Amateur Championship, will be one of the leaders this season, especially for new recruits Lisa Combs, Joanna Henry, and Maria Lu. —Steven Lau

Cross-country

FILE PHOTO

In the NCAA preseason regional rankings, released by the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association last week, the Columbia women’s cross country team earned a third-place position, and the men’s team took fifth.

With the bar set high, the Lions hope to hit the ground running in their first meet of the 2011 season against Vermont and Saint Michael’s in Williston, Vt. on Sunday.

After last season’s success, with both the men’s and women’s teams finishing fifth in the Northeast Regional meet, which represents all major programs from the region, this year’s runners have an expectation of success.

To achieve that end, the team will rely on the return of experienced runners like junior Caroline McDonough, who qualified for the 2010 NCAA National Cross Country Championships, and sophomore Jacob Sienko, who represented the U.S. in the North America, Central America and Caribbean Athletic Association Cross Country Championships earlier this year.

The Light Blue also has nine new additions to the women’s team and twelve new additions to the men’s team who will compete for the first time this weekend.

—Steven Lau

Lions take win streak to Rhode Island

BY ROBERT WREN GORDON Spectator Staff Writer In this last weekend before the Columbia Invitational and the Lions’ first home games of the season, the volleyball team (2-1) hopes to continue last Saturday’s success and extend their win streak as they travel to Kingston, R.I. to participate in the University of Rhode Island Tournament, where they will face hosts Rhode Island, Wisconsin, and Boston College.

The Light Blue starts the tournament today at 11:00 a.m. when it faces off against Rhode Island.

The Rams (5-1) are currently riding high after sweeping their competition last weekend at the Stony Brook Holiday Inn Express Tournament in Stony Brook, N.Y. The Rhody began the season back on August 26 with a sweep of Saint Francis in Pittsburgh, P.A. The star of that match was senior Kayla Francis, who led the team with 11 kills and currently leads

COLUMBIA VS. RHODE ISLAND Kingston, R.I., Friday 11 a.m.

COLUMBIA VS. WISCONSIN Kingston, R.I., Saturday 11 a.m.

COLUMBIA VS. BOSTON COLLEGE Kingston, R.I., Saturday 3 p.m.

the team for the season with 97 kills thus far in 2011.

The tournament will continue for the Lions on Saturday with a doubleheader against Wisconsin at 11:00 a.m. and Boston College at 3:00 p.m. The Badgers (3-3) are coming off a successful outing last weekend at the N.C. State Invitational, where they went 2-1. After Texas A&M left the tournament late due to injuries, the Badgers wound up facing Western Carolina, who they handily defeated 3-0 behind the leadership of senior cocaptain Elle Ohlander, who led Wisconsin with seven kills and

9.5 total points, and sophomore Dominique Thompson, who led the team, hitting .455.

The Lions wrap up the tournament on Saturday afternoon with a matchup against Boston College, who has struggled early this season with a 1-4 overall record. The Eagles began the season back on August 26 against Florida in Gainesville, Fla., a match they lost 3-0. The Eagles’ only victory of the season thus far came last week against Utah, during which senior outside hitter Tsvetelina Dureva recorded 15 kills and 12 digs and senior captain Brennan Clark notched 24 digs.

For the Lions to continue their win streak this weekend in Rhode Island, the team will rely on offensive leaders such as senior Cindy Chen, junior Megan Gaughn, and sophomore Monique Roberts, who all lead the team in offense with over 20 kills each. The team will also depend upon its defensive leaders, including Chen and sophomore Charlee Dyroff, who lead the team with over 30 digs each.

SENIOR SAVER

|

Senior goalkeeper and co-captain Lillian Klein hopes to continue her success.

CU travels cross-country seeking first win

BY MOLLY TOW Spectator Staff Writer After going winless in its first weekend of play, the Columbia women’s soccer team is looking to redeem itself as it travels to the west coast for another pair of games.

The Light Blue (0-2) will face No. 22 San Diego State (32-1) on Friday and then head to Cal State Fullerton (1-3-1) on Sunday to round out its crosscountry trip.

The Lions are trying to bounce back from the St. John’s NYC Classic, in which they faced two in-state competitors, Hofstra and tournament hosts St. John’s, losing 2-0 and 1-0, respectively.

However, the NYC Classic provided promise for the Lions.

Columbia’s talent was still recognized, as senior co-captain and forward Ashlin Yahr and sophomore defender Chelsea Ryan were named to the alltournament team following its St. John’s match. Senior goalkeeper

COLUMBIA AT SAN DIEGO ST. San Diego, C.A., Friday 4:30 p.m.

COLUMBIA AT CAL STATE FULLERTON Fullerton, C.A., Sunday 4 p.m.

and co-captain Lillian Klein was also a standout for the Lions, and Columbia hopes to see her continue to deny opposing goalscoring opportunities this season.

Columbia’s first opponent this weekend, San Diego State, appeared to be the vastly dominant team in its game against Alabama this past Sunday.

However, the Aztecs were not able to convert any opportunities and were shutout by the Crimson Tide, 1-0. San Diego State trailed for a large portion of the game because of a breakaway Crimson Tide goal in the 13th minute. The nationallyranked Aztecs outshot the Tide, 21-3, and kept ‘Bama from even taking a shot in the final 49 minutes of the game, but ultimately fell short. The Aztecs hadn’t

been held scoreless since early November of last year. The Lions will look to contain San Diego State’s offense, which is led by forwards Jensen Skinner and Haley Locker.

Cal State Fullerton has also played its fair share of close contests, as three of its five games so far this season have gone into overtime. In those matches, the Titans are 0-2-1. Like San Diego State, the Titans are coming off a tough defeat, losing 1-0 to Utah State on Sunday. Fullerton was slightly outmatched, as Utah State outshot the Titans 19-13.

Fullerton’s two top goal-scorers graduated last year, so Columbia will try to take advantage of the emerging offense. Players to keep an eye on will be junior Stacey Fox, freshman Lauren Stupin, and sophomore Nikki McCants.

Returning to the east coast with victories under their belts would be a quick confidencebooster for the Lions. Kickoff is scheduled for 4:30 p.m. at San Diego State on Friday, and 4 p.m. at Cal State Fullerton on Sunday.

Many things to take away from CU games SHARF, from B8 big moments Sports are sports, and big moments are big moments.

In this week alone, there have been two exciting finishes in Columbia men’s soccer games.

Last Sunday, junior forward Will Stamatis booted a left-footed shot across the goalkeeper in the early moments of overtime to lead the Lions to a 2-1 victory over Sacred Heart. Stamatis was at it again this past Tuesday, providing more overtime magic with a similar goal for the Light Blue on its way to another 2-1 victory.

In a school where people can’t seem to agree on anything, sports can serve as a form of campus unity.

The 3-0 Columbia men’s soccer team is one of many promising teams that can provide an adrenaline rush similar to that of a professional sporting event.

These types of moments not only provide a thrill, but can instantly spark life into a crowd, and often lead to high fives and fist bumps with complete strangers (it’s okay, you’re safe talking to strangers in the student section). camaraderie In a school where people can’t seem to agree on anything, sports can serve as a form of campus unity.

Whether or not you’re

competing in the classroom, or on the campus political battleground, when you’re at a sporting event, everybody is on the same side.

Nothing beats sitting in the stands with a host of your classmates, many of whom you may not even know, watching athletes compete for your school. cost What’s the cost to attend a Columbia football game? Zero. Basketball? Zero.

Baseball? You get the point.

Since Columbia students love free stuff, why not attend some sporting events, which you can go to free of charge, while also supporting the school you love (or at least the one you go to)? convenience Baker may seem like a trek, but there is a free shuttle that leaves from 116th Street that will take you right there. That gets rid of all the hassle of taking the subway, while keeping those 225 cents (450 round trip) on your MetroCard. Dodge could not be a more convenient location for a basketball arena.

Nestled two levels below the upper level of campus, a basketball game in Dodge provides a unique escape from the usual campus buzz.

We are also lucky enough to have the best imaginable locations for our student sections at both football and basketball games. Each sport provides us with a front-middle seat. Other schools pack their students into an undesirable corner location, saving the best seats for boosters willing to pay top dollar. student-athletes When it comes down to it, the men and women who are participating in these sports

are your peers. They take the same classes as you, they live in the same dorms as you, they eat at the same restaurants as you (and drink at the same bars), and they even pay the same tuition as you.

What makes them different is that they also represent their school by playing a sport.

When it comes to the college sports, there are no student-athletes whom I respect more than those who attend Ivy League institutions. They get no additional financial help from the university (outside of the same financial aid that is available to all students), and are still expected to complete their rigorous Ivy League educational requirements while holding up a practice schedule similar to those at top Division I schools. free stuff Columbians relish any opportunity to grab some free stuff, and nobody provides a more consistent flow of cool, useful paraphernalia than the athletics department.

If there is one thing they do right, it’s giving out free T-shirts and other apparel in order to boost attendance at events. Those brave enough to attempt to attend every “student rewards eligible event” will receive my eternal gratitude (as well as some awesome prizes).

So if the only thing that can draw you to a sporting event is a “Beat Cornell” T-shirt, that’s okay, but do me a favor and try to stay for the entire game.

Next time you decide you want to sleep in on a Saturday morning, try setting an alarm for 11:30 and taking the shuttle to Baker. Maybe you’ll learn to enjoy it.

Jeremiah Sharf is a List College sophomore. sports@columbiaspectator.com

EDITORIAL & OPINION

PAGE B6

SEPTEMBER 9, 2011

Professor anarchist The 135th year of publication Independent since 1962 CORPORATE BOARD SAMUEL E. ROTH Editor in Chief MICHELE CLEARY Managing Editor ADITYA MUKERJEE Publisher

MANAGING BOARD LEAH GREENBAUM Campus News Editor SARAH DARVILLE City News Editor GABRIELLA PORRINO Editorial Page Editor REBEKAH MAYS Editorial Page Editor ALLISON MALECHA Arts & Entertainment Editor JIM PAGELS Sports Editor MRINAL MOHANKA Sports Editor MIKEY ZHONG Spectrum Editor AMANDA CORMIER The Eye, Editor in Chief ASHTON COOPER The Eye, Managing Editor CINDY PAN The Eye, Art Director ALEX COLLAZO Head Copy Editor PHOEBE LYTLE Photo Editor ANN CHOU Design Editor JEREMY BLEEKE Design Editor JAKE DAVIDSON Online Content Editor HANNAH D’APICE Staff Director ANDREW HITTI Alumni Director MABEL MCLEAN Sales Director SPENCER DUHAIME Finance Director

DEPUTY BOARD News Editors Jackie Carrero, Karla Jimenez, Chelsea Lo, Abby Mitchell, Sammy Roth, Finn Vigeland Arts & Entertainment Editors Claire Fu, Claire Stern, Maricela Gonzalez Copy Editor Maggie Alden Design Editor Rebecca Schwarz, Illustrations Editor Jiin Choi Photo Editors Zara Castany, Maria Castex, Alyson Goulden, Christina Phan Sports Editors Zach Glubiak Infrastructure Editor Amrita Mazumdar Sales Thomas Elustondo, Alex Smyk Finance Gabriela Hempfling, Noah Kolatch, Daniela Quintanilla Alumni Rob Frech, Rex Macaylo Multimedia Justine Hope

ASSOCIATE BOARD Editorial Page Editors Andrea Garcia-Vargas, Ramón Girón-Meléndez, Samantha Henderson, Leo Schwartz, Lanbo Zhang Arts & Entertainment Editors Ian Erickson-Kery, Maricela Gonzalez, Melissa Haney, Joseph Pomp, Katy Tong Copy Editors Maggie Alden, Peter Andrews, Jack Dickey, Abigail Fisch, Jessica Geiger, Emily Handsman, Michelle Lappen, Hannah Laymon, Gina Lee, Emily Neil, Andrea Shang, Emily Sorensen, Sean Wong Page Design Editors Maya Fegan, Joe Girton, Tanvi Gupta, Leila Lin, Geetika Rudra, Finn Vigeland, Isaac White, Laura Ye Graphic Design Editors Stephanie Mannheim, Yuma Shinohara Photo Editors Arvin Ahmadi, Hannah Botkin, Phoebe Brosnan, Kate Scarbrough, Henry Willson Sports Editors Rebeka Cohan, Trevor Cohen, Robert Wren Gordon, Jeremiah Sharf, Molly Tow, Ryan Young Sales Katherine Estabrook, Aurora Lende, Ross Lerner, Jamie Yu Finance Brendan Barry, Shivrat Chhabra, Michelle Lacks, Jiaqi Liu, Zhaokun Ma, Bruno Mendes, Gedion Negash, Kinnari Norojono

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If you know of an error, please inform us at copy@ columbiaspectator.com.

COMMENTS & QUESTIONS For general comments or questions about the newspaper, please write to the editor in chief and managing editor at editor@ columbiaspectator.com.

Frank Tannenbaum began life as an anarchist, and then served a long prison sentence, before earning his bachelor’s degree at Columbia College and eventually becoming a distinguished professor. Few other faculty members in the history of the University have followed such an unlikely career path.

His greatest institutional legacy on campus was the founding of the University Seminars, which began their 68th year this semester. The Seminars have flourished in that time, growing from five original offerings to over eighty seminars today, involving thousands of professors, as well as hundreds of curators, diplomats, and other experts. The sessions are intended to facilitate “the integration of otherwise fragmented knowledge,” but this commitment to multifaceted thinking emerged from the most radical of sources.

Frank Tannenbaum was nineteen years old in the year 1914, an intellectually voracious immigrant with little access to formal learning. He toiled as an elevator operator, reading Plato while carrying passengers up and down. Still, even this type of work was unsteady in the midst of a recession. He lost his job and then his apartment, and joined the ranks of tens of thousands of other homeless and unemployed New Yorkers.

Determined to draw attention to this suffering, he joined the Industrial Workers of the World, the most notorious labor group in the nation. While other unions refused to include women, minorities, or unskilled workers, the I.W.W. would admit just about anyone, including the unemployed.

In early March, he discovered a novel tactic to make a name for himself. Leading a few dozen jobless followers into a church on Fifth Avenue he interrupted the pastor’s sermon and demanded food and lodging. Anxious to get the rabble away from his congregation, the reverend gave them some money instead. The next night they went to another church,

After Office Hours

There’s no place like home The last time I was in New York, Campo was still Campo, Uni Café was under renovation, and Liz’s Place didn’t brew Starbucks.

Returning to Columbia as a senior after having spent the last seven months in Paris, I expect to be able JESSICA to strut the streets of Morningside HILLS Heights with my eyes closed, pointing out the coffee shops, supermarkets, Urban and street carts that were the fixtures Dictionary of my neighborhood for three years.

But—thanks to the online Spec coverage I could follow while abroad—I know that the landscape of my memory has been transformed over the past few months. My mental sidewalk stroll would be proven faulty in an instant by Google Maps.

Don’t be mistaken—I am all for more variety and better coffee options.

At the same time, in anticipation of my return to Morningside Heights, I couldn’t help but ask myself, “Will the same sights and sounds welcome me home?”

In trying to make sense of the sweeping retail changes in Morningside Heights over the past year, the Columbia buzzword “gentrification” comes to mind.

Artisan coffee shops and bakeries attract a type of customer who is willing to spend more for these products, and who is likely to be looking for other high-end retail and residences in the area. As shops of this economic stratum creep north of 116th Street, they raise the desirability and property value of the neighborhood.

There are certainly positive aspects of making a tar-

I know that the landscape of my memory has been transformed over the past few months. nished area shinier and safer. There are also problems, not the least of which are moral, such as rent rising beyond what current residents can afford. Also, with an increasing number of chain coffee shops and bakeries comes stiffer competition with local businesses.

Therein lies the rub.

While studying political science at Sciences Po, I tried to describe Morningside Heights to my Parisian peers. What makes it so unique, I argued, was its location sandwiched between the Upper West Side and West Harlem. In a span of 30 blocks, I could walk from the Whole Foods in the new Columbus Village development to the legendary Apollo Theatre. I could eat organic quinoa, and I could get fried chicken on 125th Street and St. Nicholas. (Yes, that’s where Liz Lemon goes with Tracy Jordan in the pilot episode of “30 Rock”.)

Now, I fear that the smells will be blander, the signs less colorful, and the people more homogenous than they were before I left last December. In Morningside Heights, we have the Starbucks and the bagels that gain us admission to the greater Manhattan community, but we also have a local flavor that puts us on the maps as a distinct part of the Island.

Several questions ran through my head as I prepared for my re-entry into New York life: Will I still be greeted by the familiar whiffs of the Halal cart on 115th Street and the laundromat on 124th Street that were my guiding lights up and down Broadway?

And, more importantly, will the voices of the people who have lived, worked, and sent their children to school in West Harlem for years be heard above the sometimes louder voices of those more recently drawn to the area?

Taking the diversity that characterizes the tiny area delineated as “Morningside Heights” and replacing it with the same chains that dot all of Manhattan would rob the neighborhood of its distinctiveness, which right now is reflected in the range of arts offerings, religious events, and community gatherings that take place in the neighborhood, and which I looked forward to returning to from my vie parisienne.

Jessica Hills is a Barnard College senior majoring in political science and French and Francophone studies. She is a former associate news editor. Urban Dictionary runs alternate Fridays.

and then another.

Tannenbaum had discovered the perfect protest to demonstrate what he saw as the hypocrisy of religion. Here were godly people preaching charity, and yet when confronted by the actual needy they reacted with disgust. “In the whole history of this country,” declared Mother Earth, an anarchist magazine, “there has never perhaps been witnessed a popular movement of deeper meaning and more far-reaching potential effect than the raiding of churches by the unemployed of New York.”

Meanwhile, Tannenbaum had become a household name.

Newspapers dubbed him the “Boy I.W.W. Leader,” and asked “Who is this young Tannenbaum?” Every night, he descended on a different church, making fiery speeches and demanding basic rights for the homeless and destitute. “We are entitled to champagne, roast turkey and a shower bath,” he told his followers. “We are going to break the law and go to jail if necessary to get what we are entitled to.”

The city fathers began to panic. The mayor felt pressured to stop these predations, and on March 4, when Tannenbaum entered a church in SoHo, the police were waiting. He was taken into custody, along with 190 followers. At the time, it was the largest mass arrest in the city’s history—a record that stood for half a century, until the NYPD ended the occupations here at Columbia by arresting more than 700 student radicals on April 30, 1968.

Tannenbaum had remained scrupulously polite throughout his protests. No one had been hurt, nothing had been stolen.

The men had always left a church if the pastor asked them to go. When they had stayed, the homeless had made sure to clean up after themselves in the morning. Despite all this, the city was determined to set a severe precedent. Tannenbaum was given the maximum penalty possible—a year in jail.

It was within the dreadful confines of the prison on Blackwell’s Island—today’s Roosevelt Island—that Tannenbaum’s serious education really began. Supporters

sent him all the books they could afford, on every subject imaginable. He perused them in his cell until his eyesight began to fail, and kept careful notes on everything he read.

After he was released from jail, and despite his notoriety, he convinced the nervous deans at Columbia to admit him to the college. His former comrades were aghast, but he was determined to improve himself. Each morning he awoke at 5 a.m. to study. Through hard work, he managed to keep up with the advanced curriculum. At first, he struggled. In his first two semesters, he received a D in composition, a C in German, and a B in history. The revolutionist received his best mark—an A—in business. But he soon mastered the material, and in 1921 he graduated with honors.

As a scholar, his writings would encompass a broad variety of subjects, including the labor movement, Latin American studies, prison conditions, and the history of slavery. Just as when he was an elevator operator reading in his spare moments, Tannenbaum’s academic career revealed an appetite for knowledge.

His interests combined the variety of his own personal experiences, and the University Seminars, which he founded in 1944, would be based on the same idea. He died in 1969 at the age of 76, and three of the original seminars he created—“The Problem of Peace,” “Studies in Religion,” and “The Renaissance”—are still meeting to this day. And the questions and debates remain as vital as ever. “Tannenbaum was right,” said Robert Pollack, current director of the University Seminars. “A conversation about a basic human institution– conflict, faith or art–will yield continuous fruit, even after 67 years.”

Barnard boy

situation, my friend Andrew and I made two friends at Barnard through theater who ended up needing to pull two people into their suite. We got offered two spots, and I’m quite grateful that we did. I’m almost certain we’re the only two male students to live in this building and maybe even the first two male students to ever live in this building—CG is relatively new.

BY SAM MICKEL Not to toot my own horn, but last semester I was given the pleasure of performing in the Varsity Show. Mid-second act, Chris Silverberg stopped the show proclaiming his love of being a boy at Barnard in his song “Barnard Boy.” His character, Jesse, mistakenly applied to Barnard, unaware of its solely female student body, and was somehow admitted. Silverberg provided a sultry and melodious end to Jesse’s struggle to accept his existence as said Barnard Boy. Beyond the obvious addition of classes to my schedule, the bane of my existence these past couple of days has been my 15 minute commute every morning walking from 110th and Manhattan Ave (an avenue most Columbia students don’t even seem to know exists). This commute is due to the fact that I’m living in the Barnard equivalent of Harmony, Cathedral Gardens. So, while my writing may not be as sultry or melodious in nature as Silverberg’s voice, let this article be my declaration of my Barnard Boy-dom.

In light of the recent installment of gender neutral housing, my living arrangement seem somewhat poignant, though maybe it’s less so considering a guy and a girl living in the same suite has been kosher under Barnard school policy for a while now. That being said, I’ve found this to be a little known fact among students, which might say something with regards to student interactions bridging Barnard and Columbia. Clearly there are some close friendships made—and I don’t mean that as a euphemism—or mixed gendered housing probably wouldn’t exist. But at the same time, its existence is known and taken advantage of by so few and far between that it makes me wonder how many of these close friendships exist. If they really are sparse, that’s sad for students on both campuses.

I suppose I developed my tendency towards the west side of Broadway second semester of last year. As a lowly freshman, I was struggling to decide on a major, and at the time religion and theater were both on my list. Both departments happen to exist as joint departments between Columbia College and Barnard College on the Barnard campus. So, for the whole semester, I spent all of my Tuesdays and Thursdays taking a couple of amazing classes as I wandered between Milbank and the Diana fulfilling my course load. I didn’t realize the ridiculousness of this until I found myself crossing the street back to Columbia to meet my Barnard friend for lunch as she had just finished class in Havemeyer Hall. I also realized that with all likelihood I was taking more Barnard classes than some Barnard girls themselves, as confirmed by my Barnard suitemates. That of course brings me to the real kicker—I have Barnard suitemates because I’m living in Barnard housing.

To succinctly explain how I ended up in this housing

The author is a sixth-year PhD candidate in U.S. history and is a teaching assistant for History of the City of New York.

Jones’ second book, “More Powerful than Dynamite: Radicals, Plutocrats, Progressives, and New York’s Year of Anarchy,” will be published in April 2012.

Let this article be my declaration of my Barnard Boy-dom.

Admittedly, there were a couple of mishaps at the beginning. The security guards were a little skeptical when I used my keys to enter the building for early move-in. However, they became quite affable after discovering I had the interim-housing sticker of approval on my I.D. Now, Andrew and I have made friends with all of the guards, probably partially because we can be easily recognized—we’re the only two with facial hair. Later on official move-in day I was welcomed “back to Barnard” and given a new Barnard lanyard by building staff and our RAs. But, now that that’s all sorted out, my only reservation about living here is that I’ll be labeled the man-hoe who’s desperate enough to walk the three quarters of a mile from campus for a pleasurable evening. To play off of the often heard and somewhat offensive joke, “Why does the Columbia student cross the street?”­—I cross the street to go home, rather than to get laid.

In all honesty, I do love living here at Barnard. First and foremost it means I’m not living on the McBain shaft my sophomore year. I have a suite with a kitchen and a generously sized bathroom and common room. I’m with three awesome suitemates, though we might get somewhat cultish at times—we now have our own blog. The suite itself is probably much nicer than anything I’d be able to afford in NYC. The three quarters of a mile walk gave me an excuse to buy and ride a bike, which I wanted to do all last year anyway. While I’ve only lived here two weeks and don’t completely know what’s in store, all puns and bad jokes aside, there is little bad I can say about this living situation.

Maybe it’s time that Columbia students took advantage of Barnard’s resources as much as people say Barnard students do of Columbia’s. Either way I can certainly say it really does appear that “not every bear is female” because “[I’m] just a Barnard Boy.” The author is a Columbia College sophomore. He was a cast member in the 117th Varsity Show.

justin walker

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SPORTS FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 9 • PAGE B8

Heading to the game is worth the experience

L

et’s face it, for many Columbia students the world of Columbia athletics is one they would rather not visit. With the first week of the JEREMIAH 2011-12 school SHARF year wrapping up, it’s hard to Sharf believe there are At t a c k many students (particularly freshmen) who are itching to head up to 218th Street for the football home opener on Sept. 17. I’m not hoping to make students appreciate Columbia athletics more than say, free food, but I hope to show you that going to see the Lions play can actually be rewarding on a number of levels.

Where we stand right now, students would rather pay for food than take the time to wake up early on a Saturday morning to catch the shuttle to Baker Field, or even give up the beginning of a Saturday night to watch the exciting basketball team play at Dodge. I am here to change that.

Let’s go through the basics: sports are sports Whether or not you’ll admit it, a sport is a sport. Yes, watching the Giants play the Eagles at the Meadowlands is certainly more entertaining than watching the Lions play Albany at Baker, but Columbia can still offer you the thrill of attending a live sporting event.

Television sets can provide you with a nice experience, but nothing beats hearing the crack of the pads, the sound of a ball swishing through the air, and the sound of a bat making contact with a ball.

SEE SHARF, page B3

FILE PHOTO

WILL I AM |

Junior forward Will Stamatis will be looking to extend his scoring streak at this weekend’s invitational. He has tallied three goals already this year.

Lions hope to stay perfect during trip to New Mexico

BY MRINAL MOHANKA Spectator Senior Staff Writer The Columbia men’s soccer team heads to New Mexico this weekend to participate in the TLC Plumbing, Heating and Cooling Lobo Invitational.

The Lions (3-0) will be looking to extend their bright start to the new campaign when they take on the hosts, the University of New Mexico Lobos (2-0-1), on Friday before playing the Missouri State University Bears (0-3) on Sunday afternoon.

“I think we have a good game plan going in and we’re going to approach it one game at a time,” Lions head coach Kevin Anderson said. “We understand the elements we’re going to be up against when we get there, and I think it’s a great opportunity for our team to showcase our abilities.”

COLUMBIA AT NEW MEXICO Albuquerque, N.M. , Friday 9 p.m.

COLUMBIA VS. MISSOURI STATE Albuquerque, N.M., Sunday 12:30 p.m.

It is an approach that, so far, has paid dividends, as the Light Blue put on commendable performances to defeat Fairfield 1-0 and Sacred Heart 2-1 (OT) before battling to another 2-1 (OT) victory against Saint Peter’s earlier this week. As a result, the Lions received two votes in this week’s NSCAA National Division I poll.

Junior forward Will Stamatis has led the line for Columbia, and has three goals already this season, including both overtime winners. He has been ably supported by his teammates, especially sophomore midfielder David Najem.

Najem has been instrumental from midfield, and his goal against Fairfield and assists against Sacred Heart resulted in him being crowned the season’s first Ivy League Player of the Week.

In the hosts, who received 18 votes in this week’s NSCAA poll, the Lions will be taking on formidable opposition.

Like the Light Blue, the Lobos are yet to taste defeat this season, and have convincingly dispatched Towson and Santa Clara, and played out a goalless draw at Cal Poly. Lawrence Robledo and Blake Smith will be the attacking threat for the Lobos, who are extremely strong defensively, having not yet conceded in a competition this season.

The Bears will be looking to improve their record for the year as they enter the tournament this weekend on the back of three consecutive defeats. They were defeated 2-1 by both Belmont and

Tulsa, before crashing to a 1-0 defeat at Memphis on Sunday. James Fawke and Jared Gain lead the team in points with a goal apiece.

Besides their opponents, another factor to which the Lions will need to adjust is the high altitude, over 5000 feet above sea level, in Albuquerque.

“You always have to make sure you’re prepared, and altitude is a part of their environment—just like it rained here the other night,” Coach Anderson said. “I think we’ve done everything that we can to prepare everybody for the flight—the medical staff has been fantastic helping us with that, and we’ll do more preparation to play at altitude when we get there, so we’ll be completely ready.”

The Light Blue kick off against New Mexico tonight, Sept. 9th, at 9 p.m., and take on Missouri State on Sunday, Sept.

11th, at 12:30 p.m. (both times eastern).

Weekend

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT • FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2011 • PAGE C1

ILLUSTRATION BY JIIN CHOI

Escape back into summer with a trip inside the city

BY IAN ERICKSON-KERY Spectator Staff Writer Students needn’t despair over the unusually dreary weather that began this semester. September can provide glimpses of latesummer bliss, and students shouldn’t neglect the city’s countless warm-weather offerings. Workloads are light, and the early days of the semester contain some of New York’s best bargains.

New York City Downtown Boathouse (multiple locations): In recent decades, the city’s waterwys have been transformed from polluted no-go zones into some of its most cherished public spaces. The Downtown Boathouse provides adventurous New Yorkers the opportunity to experience one of New York’s most vital aspects in an entirely new way: from the vantage point of a kayak. After signing a waiver, participants receive a set of ground rules and a brief tutorial on kayak maneuvering. Then they are set free to traverse the river’s waves and ogle the Manhattan skyline from a remarkable angle. Locations at Riverside Park and 72nd Street and at Pier 40 (West Street, at West Houston Street) are open on weekends from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. until Oct. 10. For those who want more than just a recreational outlet, the Downtown Boathouse offers short technique classes Wednesday nights at 6 p.m. at Pier 96 (Twelfth Avenue, at West 56th Street).

The High Line (Gansevoort Street to West 30th Street, near Tenth Avenue): Though the High Line has become a major tourist destination, it remains one of New York’s most charming and unique outdoor spaces. Situated on an abandoned elevated train track, the park meanders in between the industrial buildings and stylish residential high-rises of the Meatpacking District and West Chelsea. Park visitors encounter a variety of different

botanical and architectural environments, each accompanied by a picturesque view of the Hudson River. An architectural installation containing bird feeders by Columbia Visual Arts professor Sarah Sze flanks the walking path between 20th and 21st streets.

The High Line’s inclusion of public art fits with its location in the city’s primary gallery neighborhood. The High Line also offers a selection of some of the city’s best local food vendors. Blue Bottle Coffee (near 16th Street), a San Francisco company with a storefront in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, offers a full espresso bar, a selection of single-source drip coffees, and stellar coldbrew iced coffee. Melt Bakery creates ice cream sandwiches from simple but masterfully crafted cookies and artisanal ice cream.

“The Minimalist” is a classic made from chocolate chip cookies and vanilla ice cream. The rest of the selection, including “The Belle” (peach ice cream and brown butter bourbon shortbread cookies), is more complex but no less irresistible. The Porch serves a menu of quick, light lunch fare made from fresh, flavorful ingredients. Each of these High Line vendors has a core commitment to local and sustainable practices, consistent with the park’s forward-thinking values. A visit to the site serves not just as time well-spent with friends but also as a show of support for an innovative city institution.

Rockaway Beach (Queens): Sandy beaches aren’t the first image that comes to mind when one thinks of New York, but extensive stretches of beach exist within the city limits. Students seeking an excursion from campus and a lazy late-summer day can set their sights on Rockaway Beach, located in the distant stretches of southeastern Queens. Once a neglected part of the city visited only by niche communities, the area surrounding the boardwalk offers 170 acres to swim, sunbathe, play in the sand,

and—thanks to a burgeoning food vendor scene—eat. Brooklyn culinary icons The Meat Hook and Roberta’s have teamed up to form Ripper’s (Boardwalk, at 86th Street), a casual hangout spot offering drinks, burgers, and hot dogs, in addition to a selection of vegetarian items. The Lower East Side vegan bakery Babycakes (Boardwalk, at 96th Street) and Blue Bottle Coffee (Boardwalk, at 106th Street), have also opened up summer operations at Rockaway Beach. To get there, take the A train into Queens to Broad Channel. From Broad Channel, regular shuttles run to a number of stops along the beach. From Columbia, the trip is a daunting one-and-a-half hours one way, but it provides for the most classic beach experience in the city.

Warm Up at MoMA PS1 (22-25 Jackson Ave., at 46th Avenue, Queens): Hurricane Irene managed to push the end of summer back just a bit further—at least at MoMA’s outpost in Queens. The last of PS1’s series of late-summer concerts featuring experimental and electronic acts was rescheduled for the evening of Sept. 10. This weekend’s line-up includes the playful, percussive indie-pop duo Tanlines from New York, the more ethereal yet equally galvanizing Teengirl Fantasy from Oberlin, and a DJ set from Physical Therapy from Brooklyn. Spectators stand in the contemporary art museum’s spacious courtyard beneath a graceful canopy of white ropes designed by architects Interboro Partners. The concert begins at 2 p.m. and admission is $15 for an afternoon of dancing and socializing in one of the city’s coolest outdoor venues.

New York is always teeming with activity, but the end of the summer provides students with prime opportunities to get out of their stuffy dorm rooms and explore the city free of heavy coats and costs.

MARIA CASTEX/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

ART CLASS

|

Bing’s “Square Word Calligraphy” exhibit at Schermerhorn’s Wallach Art Gallery invites visitors to interact with the works through instructional books, videos, and action stations.

Chinese artist Xu Bing blurs cultural lines across neatly printed characters and dust

BY CHRISTIN ZURBACH Spectator Staff Writer Xu Bing is an artist who asks questions, examines cultural and linguistic norms, and challenges standardized visions. Inhabiting multiple cultures, Bing has split his time between the United States and his native China for over twenty years.

This cultural duality bleeds into his work.

In his Sept. 7 to Oct. 22 exhibit “Square Word Calligraphy,” tucked into Columbia’s Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery on the eighth floor of Schermerhorn Hall, framed pieces

showcase what appear to be elegantly drawn Mandarin characters, beautiful but unintelligible to the English mind. The characters are actually words in English, altered slightly to fit the boxy style of Chinese writing.

This calligraphy installation also contains a video, instructional books, supplies, and action stations. The passive viewer becomes an active participant. As visitors attempt to paint English letters in Chinese style, they grapple head-on with the difficulty of writing old letters in new ways. In the framed examples, Bing makes the familiar foreign, urging onlookers to reconsider

their own definitions of what is external.

The teaching component propels the idea one step further. The viewer is given the opportunity to reverse this process, familiarizing the alienating text by writing in it themselves. Again, one’s own culture feels foreign in a different form.

Bing, an already accomplished artist recently awarded an honorary doctorate from Columbia, is still on the rise and currently has multiple exhibits. “Where does dust collect itself?” at The Spinning Wheel Building (5 W. 22nd St., between Fifth and Sixth avenues) also explores contrasts in language and cultural reflection, but in a more

sobering context. The exhibit uses dust which Bing collected himself from Ground Zero after the events of 9/11. The show, which has been in Wales and other international locales, premiered Sept. 8 in New York in commemoration of the 10-year anniversary of 9/11.

The Spinning Wheel Building is an unadorned, scruffy, industrial venue that was offered to Bing by a benefactor. Its yellow walls are speckled with chipped-away paint, more an abandoned warehouse than a museum. The

SEE XU BING, page C2

PAGE C2

Best of

WEEKEND

SEPTEMBER 9, 2011

Ramen

Instant ramen is a staple among hasty, unhealthy, late study-night meals. However, in New York, speedy ramen soups come not just from Styrofoam cups, but also tiny, crowded noodle eateries that mimic ramen stalls in Japan. At most, fresh ramen is served almost as fast as it takes to cook in a bath of MSG and freeze-dried veggies. Though the price of one bowl might approximate that of a twelvepack of Cup of Noodles, most still qualify as student budget-friendly meals. A slurp of these eateries’ al dente noodles makes instant ramen taste like strings. —BY JULIA AN

Momofuku Noodle Bar—Most creative Momofuku Noodle Bar (171 First Ave., between 10th and 11th streets) innovatively fuses food elements together. While the noodles aren’t special, Momofuku’s spicy chicken ramen is made distinct by a Tuscan kale topping and smoky flavor from the chicken and smoked sesame seeds. The pork buns are simultaneously chewy and refreshing thanks to the piled-on

Menchanko-tei—Best ramen Menchanko-tei’s outposts (131 E. 45th St., between Lexington and Third avenues, and 43 W. 55th St., between Fifth and Sixth avenues) are easily accessible and have swift table turnaround. The noodles, perfectly chewy and thick, are made daily with Mongolian sea salt.

Meat and vegetable toppings are generous

cucumbers. For after dinner, pretzel cake truffles from Momofoku’s nearby Milk Bar (across from Momofuku Ssäm Bar) offer a precise balance between sweet and salty in cookie-dough consistency. David Chang, world-renowned chef and owner of the Momofuku group, makes cooking a science hard to out-concoct. $16 per bowl.

HANNAH CHOI / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

and fresh. The Ankake Yasai ramen’s broth is made from starch, making it gravy-like without a meaty flavor. The original Menchanko ramen is the restaurant’s twist on chankonabe, a traditional sumo wrestlers’ stew made with a huge pot of chicken, seafood, and vegetables. Half portions are available. $9 per bowl.

HANNAH CHOI / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Totto Ramen—Best flavor

HANNAH CHOI / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Literally a hidden gem, Totto Ramen (366 W. 52nd St., between Eighth and Ninth avenues) always has a crowd and full wait list even before its 20-person underground space opens. The 50-minute wait is forgotten, though, when aromatic ramen is served up within five minutes inside. The Vegetable Ramen has tangy lime and a garden of vegetables planted on top that intensely infiltrate both broth and noodles. The Totto Chicken Paitan Ramen has a hearty chicken broth and bubbling cauldron of chicken stock. The Totto Extra Spicy Ramen can be made as extreme as desired with spicy sauce on the side. Cash only. $10 per bowl.

Chuko—Best overall dining experience Farthest from campus, Chuko (552 Vanderbilt Ave., at Dean Street) just opened in late August and is run by Jamison Blankenship and David Koon, formerly at Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto’s restaurant. The chic, spacious place and professional staff cultivate a relaxing dinner. The ramen, with noodles made in California especially for Chuko, is just as minimalist as the

monochrome decor—except for its Berkshire bacon-like pork topping. The appetizers, like fried green tomato bun and shishito peppers, are atypical but piquant. The eatery’s yuzu (Japanese citrus fruit) ice cream sandwich made with macaroon cookies is sticky and cooling after a bowl of steaming ramen. Dinner service and cash only. $12 per bowl.

‘Stone Cold Fox’ to play it sly for Friday night Red Farm fails at ‘Talk to Me’ exhibit debut at Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre gimmicks, succeeds is coded for with simpler plates randomness but still has a message

BY CARMEN REN Columbia Daily Spectator

Project Space, Brooklyn: the pretentious home of an abandoned asbestos factory in the Chicken Plucking District that houses the one and only Important Theater. Project Space is strictly for “Art, not entertainment,” and especially not comedy shows.

This Friday, Sept. 9 at 7:30 p.m. and every Friday from here on out, though, Project Space will serve as the imagined setting of “Stone Cold Fox: This is Not Art,” the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre’s (307 W. 26th St., between Eighth and Ninth avenues) newest endeavor into weekend sketch comedy.

UCB has historically only hosted their immensely popular improv shows on the weekend, but sketch comedy now hopes to claim its own fame at the theater.

“The really exciting thing is that UCB is known for improv. Now a sketch team has joined their ranks, and everyone is flattered that it’s them,” Leila CohanMiccio said. Cohan-Miccio is one of the six writers of “Stone Cold Fox.” The team was put together by the theater itself— the assembled writers are all graduates of the UCB training program. The seven-actor cast of “Stone Cold Fox,” chosen through auditions, may be familiar to some from web videos, television shows such

as “30 Rock,” or other UCB performances.

Although it may be new to this time slot, sketch comedy is not unfamiliar to UCB. Every Monday since 2008, the theater has held Maude Night, which is entirely dedicated to sketch comedy.

“Stone Cold Fox” is an expansion of a short piece performed once a month on Maude Night. While it was once a 30-minute show of rough sketches, the new weekend version is an hour long and fully scripted. The performance plays out in three installments, and each one will run weekly for a three-month term.

The first installment will be shown from September to November, and the second installment will debut in December.

The show will be virtually the same from week to week, although some sketches will be added or removed depending on how the audience and the cast respond.

“I think the audience will be into it,” CohanMiccio said, adding that it will be “a fun, reliable show to bring friends to.”

Actor Nate Smith said, “Hopefully this sketch show will be something that the audience will like without knowing that they like it, you know? Like SNL.” Continuing to imagine future audiences, Smith said, “I think they will think it’s better than anything they’ve seen. Ever.”

There will also be cheap beer and lots of it.

RED FARM from page C4

crab soup dumplings, shriveled like colostomy bags? “No soup for you!”

Besides its clown-car catalogue of neuroticisms, Red Farm suffers from casual sloppiness.

Kowloon filet mignon tarts, tender beef flaky and right in one bite, are lukewarm. Curried bean curd would taste better served above room temperature.

But a bowl of smoked cucumber, chili-freckled and downright addictive, should be chilled, not merely waved over a lone ice cube.

Despite its many unlovable flaws, Red Farm does show early signs of brilliance. Herbal, sour Chinese sausage shines in a mix of spicy Korean rice cakes and shrimp. As for diced lamb, succulent and hacked into generous hunks and served with sweet white asparagus, well, Joe Ng proves he doesn’t need no gimmicks. The man can cook.

Cut the ridiculous kitsch.

You know, I learned something today. Gimmicks work better in baseball than in restaurants. Or maybe, we who relish tasty morsels more than PR jargon need to acknowledge, with great regret, that gimmicks always drum up a heavy buzz. Eddie Gaedel got his one at bat—I hope pastrami egg rolls head to the dugout soon. Meanwhile, Red Farm is only 1/8 a serious restaurant.

Flipside Guide Food & Drink reviews are evaluated for: student-friendliness, price point, accessibility, quality, and cool factor.

MOMA from page C4 Both pieces are what can be called outlets of interaction with the ever-expanding world.

This idea is what seems to unite all the pieces in “Talk To Me.” However, the organization of these pieces of art doesn’t lend itself to a cohesive train of thought.

A piece about PostSecret, an ongoing, online community art project, will be next to a Muslim prayer rug that illuminates when it is pointed in the right direction. Both are equally interesting and intriguing, but the order of the exhibit is a bit confusing.

MoMA has introduced a daunting idea: there is increasingly less order in the world as humans and technology spawn an endless amount of evolved product and invention. This exhibit displays the astonishing amount of interaction that is possible between humans and objects.

Walking out of the “Talk to Me” maze, visitors may question, “So, who am I supposed to talk to?”

The answer is, anyone and anything you want.

Flipside Guide Art reviews are evaluated for: concept, originality, execution, curation, student relatability to the artwork, exhibition price, and accessibility.

Bing’s second exhibit commemorates 9/11 with dust from the World Trade Center site XU BING from page C1

COURTESY OF UPRIGHT CITIZENS BRIGADE THEATRE

exhibition is similarly sparse: a few uncaptioned pictures denoting the exhibit’s creation process, a wooden ramp and platform, and the main work—a layer of Manhattan dust etched with the words “As there is nothing from the first, where does dust itself collect?” The quotation is from a Zen poem and was originally intended to be written in Mandarin, further showcasing the distance between words and reader. The act of translation establishes a dichotomy, since it can never fully express the intents of the original poem and couldn’t even try since Bing applies it to an entirely new context.

Behind this simple display, however, lies a more complex story. Bing’s process pictures show a doll next to the bag of dust. It’s his daughter’s doll, and Bing used it as a mold to create a doll from the 9/11 dust so that he could pass the core of his exhibit through Chinese airport security. None of this is explained, and the focal point remains the dust itself, lying on the floor beyond the platform. The venue, although a product of convenience, fits the mood of the 9/11 commemoration well. The room is bare, the walls worn, the contents a ghostly emptiness, leaving only a question: “If there is nothing from the first, where does dust itself collect?”

SEPTEMBER 9, 2011

WEEKEND

PAGE C3

Club promoter scene looks glam, but looks can fool

COURTESY OF BROOKLYN ACADEMY OF MUSIC

PENNY FOR YOUR THOUGHTS | “The Threepenny Opera” (scene pictured here) will play from Oct. 4 to Oct. 8 as part of BAM’s Next Wave Festival.

Brooklyn Academy of Music festival to show ‘Next Wave’ of talent

BY LAURA QUINTON Columbia Daily Spectator On Tuesday, Sept. 13, the Next Wave Festival crashes onto to the New York art scene at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (30 Lafayette Ave., between Ashland Place and St. Felix Street). The festival, which continues through Dec. 15, is an annual showcase of numerous groundbreaking artists’ works in dance, theater, music, film, visual art, and storytelling.

The program of dance presented at this year’s Next Wave Festival aims to make a splash in the world of dance with its diverse, original works.

The festival will feature a number of United States and New York premieres as well as performances by celebrated foreign and national companies. Among the international companies, Compagnie Thor, a contemporary company based in Belgium, will perform founder Thierry Smits’ “To the Ones I Love” from Sept. 29 to Oct. 1. It is a widely acclaimed dance piece about the male body. Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan will perform “Water Stains on the Wall,” from Oct. 12 to 15, an exploration of calligraphy choreographed by the company’s artistic director, Lin Hwai-min. Bejing Dance Theater will perform “Haze,” from Oct. 19 to 22, a piece by one

of China’s most eminent contemporary choreographers, Wang Yuanyuan.

Of particular note are performances of “I don’t believe in outer space” (Oct. 26 to 29), a work by prolific choreographer William Forsythe, and “Canyon” (Nov. 16 to 19), a new piece by John Jasperse. Both choreographers have made significant contributions to the development of the dance forms with which they work—Forsythe has stretched the boundaries of ballet vocabulary, while Jasperse continues to test and experiment within the postmodern field. Though stylistically very different, their pieces, both of which are New York premieres, promise to be aesthetically, kinesthetically, and intellectually provocative.

“Supernatural Wife” will be shown from Nov. 29 to Dec. 3 by Big Dance Theatre—a company that has won both Bessie and Obie awards. The company presents works by its founders, Paul Lazar and Annie-B Parson, which fuse various art forms to create unique contemporary “total art” works.

Also, Merce Cunningham Dance Company will perform six different works by Merce Cunningham, one of the most legendary avantgarde American artists of the 20th century. The company’s performance at BAM is one of the last stops of its Legacy Tour, a two-year event that

commenced after the death of Cunningham in 2009. Anyone interested in seeing the company before the tour concludes should not pass up on attending one of their BAM performances.

The festival is an annual showcase of numerous groundbreaking artists’ works in dance, theater, music, film, visual art, and storytelling.

For those with extra time and cash to spare, artist talks with some of the choreographers will undoubtedly shed light upon one’s viewing experience. These talks, in which artists discuss their theories and processes, will feature choreographers Hwai-min, Forsythe, and Parson and Lazar.

Additionally, Trevor Carlson, the Executive Director of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, will participate in a talk about Cunningham’s legacy on Dec. 8 at 6 p.m., and Jasperse will partake in a free post-show discussion.

courtesy of weta digital and twentieth century fox

APE OUT

|

End-of-summer flick “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” stars Columbia alum James Franco along with “Slumdog Millionaire’s” Freida Pinto.

Back-to-school blockbuster films to suit any movie-goer’s taste

BY OLIVIA WONG Spectator Staff Writer Now is the perfect time to spend catching up with friends at the movies.

Whether it’s by using a discount AMC pass from the TIC in Lerner or 301 Diana, or renting a movie from the Butler media center, students should embrace fall movie selections as well as take this last opportunity to enjoy a summer flick.

As students transition out of lazy summer and into studious fall, film releases transition from summer blockbusters to Oscar bait. The most intriguing, and most advertised, is Steven Soderbergh’s “Contagion,” which opens on Friday, Sept. 9.

The film, about a deadly virus that causes widespread death and terror, stars an enormous cast of A-listers: Kate Winslet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Matt Damon, Jude Law, and Marion Cotillard, to name a few. This film is sure to have a massive draw, and, knowing Soderbergh—of “Traffic” and “Ocean’s Eleven” fame—the attention is completely

deserved. Though not a film for the faint-hearted, this one is not to be missed.

Other slightly less chilling and perhaps more frequently enjoyable movies are also in theaters.

“Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” starring Columbia alum James Franco, SoA‘10, is showing. Be warned, at the heart of the film is not a man-versus-apes moral dilemma, but a demonstration of the evolution of motion capture technology in heavily computerized fight scenes. This display, though impressive, sometimes drowns the story in a sea of computerized monkeys, leaving the audience at a loss.

Those looking for action movies should skip the apes and go see Zoe Saldana kick some ass in “Colombiana.” The film, from the writers of the 2008 film “Taken,” Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen, follows Cataleya, played by Saldana, on her quest for revenge against the gangsters that killed her parents.

Students looking for a rom-com to satisfy their fun and flirty side might be interested

in “Crazy Stupid Love.” Not only does it have an amazing cast—Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Julianne Moore, and Emma Stone—it is also incredibly realistic.

Another highly recommended film is “30 Minutes or Less,” from the director of the underrated “Zombieland.” The comedy stars Oscarnominated Jesse Eisenberg as a pizza delivery boy, Nick, who gets kidnapped by two smalltown criminals—played by Danny McBride and Nick Swardson—who strap a bomb to his chest and force him to rob a bank. For “Parks and Recreation” fans who are in need of their Aziz Ansari fix, he co-stars as Nick’s best friend.

Despite the absurd and slightly disturbing plot, this film is clever, fantastically acted, and ridiculously engaging and entertaining. It’s capable of making students forget all about school, if only for a few hours.

Given the enticing movie selection in this late summer season, an afternoon spent at the movie theater is an afternoon well spent.

It was the most goddamn fucking ridiculous room I’d ever walked into. Throngs of model girls stalked in huge heels around tiny tables, pouring lurid drinks and gazing KEMBLE into Blackberries. A group WALKER of bankers leered with Restless drunken drawls. Some of them were dancing, confiNights dent and maladroit. In the whole place, packed and bopping, I saw one boy my age.

Seeing The Derby (West 14th Street, at Eighth Avenue) for the first time—and even on this Sunday night—was, to choose my words carefully, an utter mindfuck. It was one of those moments when, like a dark blue wave crashing onto foamy rocks, I was hit by a crippling self-awareness.

“What is this place?” I kept asking myself. “How does it exist?” And then, “What the hell am I doing here?”

I’d met Sophia a few days earlier. During the daytime, it was hard to imagine the scenes of nocturnal debauchery she described. It struck me how normal she found it all and how fondly she mentioned the doting, paternal direction of the promoters who organized everything.

I took her out one night to a Lower East Side bar, and I asked her what she’d like to drink. “I’ll have what you’re having.”

I knew she didn’t want a beer. G and T? “Um….”

Vodka soda?

“Just choose me something.”

When we sat down, she told me that she’d never been for a drink at a bar before.

She’d gone out all the time, but never without a promoter.

Curiously disconcerted, I wanted to know more.

Girl models come from all sorts of places, she told me, scouted by opportunistic agents and flown for free into the big smoke. On the first night, a promoter contacts them and offers to take them out, you know, show them a good time. They have no idea where to go, know nobody, and it makes sense. I’d do the same.

So the promoter picks them up in a cab, takes them to dinner with a bunch of other girls. They get drinking (maybe for the first time) and get everything for free.

After a nice long dinner, they pack out to a club where, of course, there’s no waiting in line. The whole process makes them feel like royalty. Before long their only friends are the other girls doing that same thing every night.

And how did it work, to give girls all of this free stuff all the time?

“Promoters get paid per hot girl,” Sophia told me. “If you have an ugly friend, you can bring them along but the promoters don’t like them because they don’t get paid.”

A wry laugh spilled out of me like broken glass from a dustpan.

It was an actual industry of going out, a conspiracy, a band of rich men who have organized the entire system—from the food to the bouncers to how drunk the models are.

At The Derby, while I got drunker and drunker (the girls’ jugs of punch were disquietingly strong), the atmosphere stayed resolutely poor. The music was trashy and shallow, half the patrons seedy and the other half scared. Darkened stares pierced vacantly through powdered masks with the eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase.

There was a stench of death about the room and an irrepressible feeling that little bags of powdered selfishness were being passed between grimy hands. Everyone was sauced off their tits in alcohol.

As small Latino men brought out more and more jugs of fetid drink, the girls swayed under the sheer volume of it all.

“I’m drunk. They didn’t give us dinner tonight,” Sophia said, and sure enough when a plate of cutesy hamburgers arrived, bony limbs thronged like seagulls on a french fry.

Then, the moment of utter phantasmagoria. None of it was real. Girls so pretty— no, so hot—and there they were, dirty and messy, scrambling for greasy food, on display like an auction.

A more diligent student than me might have reflected on the fetishization of human beauty, the labor of the make up, the expensive dresses and the promoters.

He might point to Locke’s economically efficient use of resources. My stomach churned only with sugared booze and visceral disgust. It was so inhuman.

There, people didn’t matter. The premium had shifted to hyper-stimulated oblivion and the illusion of chic.

Outside for a smoke, I watched Sophia’s friend amble up to me with an apologetic look. She was really sorry, Sophia had gone home. She’d gotten too drunk, vomited all over the toilets and blundered into a cab.

Intrigued that she’d managed to do that all in the space of a Marlboro Light, I used the heel of my boot to wipe the butt into the ground.

We chatted for a minute then I went inside to get my jacket.

Kemble Walker is a Columbia College sophomore with an undeclared major. Restless Nights runs alternate Fridays.

WEEKEND

PAGE C4

SEPTEMBER 9, 2011

Flipside Guide WHERE IT IS Time: Daily, 5 to 11:45 p.m.

Place: 529 Hudson St., between Charles and West 10th streets Rating: * CAMILLE KNOP FOR SPECTATOR

CHOP CHOP Joe Ng and Eddie Schoenfeld’s new restaurant venture Red Farm offers a fusional take on dim sum, with menu items like shrimp dumplings served with guacamole and egg rolls stuffed with Katz’s pastrami, unfortunately to poor results. |

Red Farm

Downtown dim sum spot strikes out

BY JASON BELL Spectator Senior Staff Writer Eddie Gaedel had the smallest strike zone ever seen in the Major Leagues. On Aug. 19, 1951, Gaedel got his 3 feet 7 inches of fame when Bill Veeck, owner of the St. Louis Browns, sent him to the plate wearing number 1/8. A masterful publicity stunt, Gaedel’s single at bat—he walked on four pitches—sparked widespread controversy. It was the grandest gimmick of Veeck’s illustrious (and Hall of Fame worthy) career.

Unfortunately, not all gimmicks are destined for the record books, as Eddie Schoenfeld and Joe Ng’s new restaurant, Red Farm (529 Hudson St., between Charles and West 10th streets), demonstrates.

Schoenfeld is the Bill Veeck of contemporary Chinese restaurants— he is one of New York City’s most important, influential, and knowledgeable restaurateurs. Ng, best known for Chinatown Brasserie’s innovative dim sum, bats clean-up in the Red Farm kitchen. With such an experienced duo shepherding the troops, Red Farm should be a chicken dinner. And that’s why its inconsistency and incoherence feel so terribly wrong. Ugly, unsuccessful dishes grounded in

WHERE IT IS Time: Mon., Wed. to Thur., Sat., to Sun., 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Fri. 10:30 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Place: 11 W. 53rd St., between Fifth and Sixth avenues Cost: Free with CUID Rating: **

bald-faced illusion pepper the menu. Students looking for a weekend West Village treat should drain dumpling funds elsewhere.

An egg roll stuffed with Katz’s pastrami is page one in Schoenfeld and Ng’s book of tricks. Red Farm gets the pastrami un-steamed and does nothing to loosen the cured meat’s ligature before it heads into the frying pan, into the grease, into the dough, into more grease, into the honey mustard dipping sauce, and into the mouth. I don’t want my deli Reubens to taste like giggly bong hits of pure fat, and certainly not my $6 ($6!) egg roll. Even inveterate Katz’s fans will need supernatural strength to stuff this monstrosity down the hatch.

If you prefer food that doesn’t stare back, avoid Red Farm’s dumplings: each sports a pair of sesame seed eyes. But if you must order dim sum, opt for the “Pac Man” shrimp dumplings. Four little ghosts, each a different pastel shade, flee from a Pac Man-shaped slice of tempura yam that is perched in a bowl of—ready for this?—guacamole. Despite Ng’s delicate dumpling skins and fresh-enough filling, the guac turns an already silly dim sum dish into a sideshow act. My table mates poked, prodded, sampled—we shook our heads—we gave up on understanding. “Pac Man” shrimp dumplings aren’t funny, or interesting, or even provocative. They are a contrivance designed for foodie groupies and the incorrigibly curious. They should be shoved in the trash with Knight Rider pierogi and Haircut One Hundred spaghetti. And what happened to a foursome of deflated pork and

SEE RED FARM, page C2

MEREDITH MOORE/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

GIZMOS AND GADGETS APLENTY | A visitor to MoMA’s “Talk to Me” exhibition interacts with one of the wall installations.

‘Talk to Me’ New high-tech exhibit at MoMA explores human-gadget relationships

BY CYDNEY HEDGPETH Spectator Staff Writer

WHERE IT IS

The isle of misfit toys has landed on the third floor of the Museum of Modern Art. “Talk to Me: Design and the Communication between People and Objects” is the place where all unclassifiable “art” has come to play.

From a piece called “The Menstruation Machine” to a stop-motion animation video called “The Lost Tribes of New York,” MoMA’s new exhibit is truly a technological hodgepodge, one that can be puzzled over until Nov. 7.

MoMA does indeed seem to be asking visitors to talk to them.

Before the exhibit delves patrons into the maze of various inventions, video games, models, and TV screens, it displays signs advising visitors to use their smartphones to scan pieces’ QR codes and check MoMA’s Twitter feed for more information.

Upon entering the exhibit, attendees observe pixilated, black and white Pacman-like characters lining the wallpaper and eight television screens showcasing various examples of humans interacting with technology. If visitors choose to walk past the line of intriguing TV screens, they are quickly greeted by melting dinnerware. A video of porcelain tea kettles and plates shifting form is played to an excerpt from the film “American Beauty”—an intriguing interpretation of the human-object relationship.

This is only the strange beginning of an even bolder exhibit.

The labyrinthine room confuses starting and ending points.

However, this adds to the central theme of the exhibit as a whole, which seems to be that humans and the gizmos and gadgets they use are coming together in every non-organized way possible. Random headings are placed in even more obscure locations throughout the room. Titles such as “Objects” or “City” or “Worlds” don’t always logically correspond to the pieces around them.

“Worlds,” for example, was placed above several pieces, two of which were called “Good Things Should Never End” and “Strangle Poise Lamp.”

The former is an interactive video game that endlessly scrolls down a cartoon rainbow of links, characters, and connections to the outside world. The strangle lamp, on the totally detached other hand, allows users to act out aggression (strangling) on an object in order to compensate for their exposure to violent media.

SEE MOMA, page C2

events

wildcard

Cut Arts NY

—Pink Olive, 167 Fifth Ave., between Lincoln and Berkeley places, Saturday, Sept. 10, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., $25

Silhouette artist Karl Johnson revives the rare art form of silhouette cutting using only a pair of scissors and a knack for freehand artistry. Get an original carving cut out in one’s exact likeness and signed by the master scissor artist.

Time: Sun. to Thur., 12 to 10 p.m., Fri. to Sun., 12 p.m. to 12 a.m.

Place: 125 E. 7th St., between First Avenue and Avenue A Cost: $5-$6 Rating: ** JOSÉ A. GIRALT/SENIOR STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

‘SALTY PIMP’ | Fans of The Big Gay Ice Cream Truck’s signature cones—many made with dulce de leche ice cream and topped off with sea salt—have been lining up at the brand’s first stationary shop on the Lower East Side since it opened last weekend.

The Big Gay Ice Cream Shop

Flamboyance, not taste is toned down at the famous truck’s storefront version

BY DEVIN BRISKI Spectator Senior Staff Writer After achieving food truck fame for its provocative cone creations, The Big Gay Ice Cream Truck has decided to give stationary life a try by opening The Big Gay Ice Cream Shop (125 E. 7th St., between First Avenue and Avenue A) last weekend.

With the word-of-mouth-fueled success of the original truck, Big Gay Ice Cream’s challenge with its newest store is to feature the product without relying too much on its glittery gimmicks—something the shop successfully navigates by not trying to do too much with a space that is physically quite small. The Big Gay Ice Cream Shop plays on queer culture as a source of inspiration for its flavors without letting the concept overwhelm the food or the space. Rather than a rainbow overload, the Shop allows itself a single self-aware unicorn and forgoes logoed cups for a simple, eco-friendly ice cream presentation.

The shop caters to the young, the queer, and the NYU-attending, playing on familiar tastes and reworking them into novelty dessert form. With cones priced from $5 to $6, customers are definitely paying a price for all the buzz, but the product does offer an appeal beyond its immediate presentation.

The focus is on the flavors, and Big Gay uses elements of gay and more generally American culture to guide and interpret its fairly

style

LES Runway —Grand Opening, 139 Norfolk St., between Stanton and Rivington streets, now through Oct. 1, various times, $12 Part fashion showcase and part pop-up boutique, LES Runway is an opportunity for fledgling local designers to interact with the public in a unique setting. Purchase a new fall ensemble by day and ogle at models by night at this two-for-one event.

original creations. The “American Globs” makes explicit a national obsession with pretzels and bacon, while “The Gobbler” mixes and matches fall flavors in anticipation of Thanksgiving.

The “Salty Pimp” stands out on the list of menu items for its namesake salty-sweet combination. “The Mermaid” reworks basic elements of a key lime pie in sundae form, mixing swirled graham cracker crust and lime curd with vanilla soft serve. “The Monday Sundae” uses the same flavors as the Pimp, with a Nutella-lined waffle cone, dulce de leche whipped cream and, of course, the Shop’s signature sea salt.

Though the Pimp’s sea salt/dulce de leche duo is impeccable, the Shop does over-rely on this combination as a way to give every cone the same twist, ignoring other possibilities for creative topping combos. But with a list of selected toppings that ranges from Sriracha to wasabi pea dust, cardamom, and cayenne pepper, creative souls can take it upon themselves to provide what the shop’s signature menu is missing.

If the lines out the door opening week are any indication, people are willing to travel to give Big Gay a shot. If they continue to improve on an already solid line, the Shop’s grounded success seems likely— unless a drag-themed popsicle truck steals its thunder.

Flipside Guide Food & Drink reviews are evaluated for: student-friendliness, price point, accessibility, quality, and cool factor.

music

!!!

—The Bell House, 149 7th St., between Second and Third Avenues, Friday, Sept. 9, 8 p.m., $18 Veteran Californian dance-punk outfit !!! (pronounced “chk chk chk”) returns to NYC following the release of last year’s LP “Strange Weather, Isn’t It?” Also on the bill are Light Asylum and Computer Magic.

dance

9/11 Dance —Union Square Park (north end) at East 16th Street and Broadway, Sunday, Sept. 11, noon, free Choreographer Sarah Skags transforms her solo piece “Dances for Airports” into an 11-minute public art project.

Initially choreographed right after 9/11, the piece investigates the role of dance in the post-9/11 world. Also at Washington Square Park and Battery Park.